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THE 



PURPOSE OF GOD 




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JOSEPH SMITH DODGE I 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



PURPOSE OF GOD 



That God may be all in all. 1 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



JOSEPH SMITH DODGE, A.M., M.D., D.D, 






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BOSTON 

UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 

1894 



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Copyright, 1894, 

BY 

Universalist Publishing House. 



TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON. 



PRINTED BY F. H. GILSON CO. 



PREFACE. 



THIS book is an attempt to present in orderly form 
those views of divine and human relations which, 
during a hundred years, have been developing in the 
Universalist Church. There are, doubtless, many 
forms of statement in it which will seem new to Uni- 
versalists, and some conclusions which will not be 
readily accepted. But it is believed that every one of 
these grows logically out of ideas which are acknowl- 
edged by all ; and that the surprise or the dissent will 
be only such as we always experience when our vague 
beliefs are reduced to accurate statements and their 
inevitable corollaries set before us. 

But the book is not offered to this church alone. 
If the Universalist consciousness were not part of the 
general Christian consciousness, if it had not roots 
extending through all the past ages, and affiliations 
with the spiritual life of all Christendom, it would be 
worth no man's while to elaborate or defend it. The 
author assumes to speak to the whole Church, believ- 
ing that the system of thought here suggested — 



IV PREFACE. 

crudely, no doubt, as a first attempt — marks the 
position towards which all the best thinking of the 
Church is tending. The divine method here pre- 
sented does not permit us to suppose any abrupt 
change, any future not evolved from the past ; and the 
author imagines that he sees in much of the thinking 
of the past a feeling after such conceptions as are 
here offered. 

No apology is made for the omission of much which 
the reader might expect to find. The effort has been 
to set forth the comprehensive scheme with as little 
elaboration of detail as might be consistent with clear- 
ness of view ; and to comprise all within a volume of 
unforbidding size. 

A constant effort has been made to avoid contro- 
versy, not as in itself objectionable or permanently 
avoidable, but as tending to obscure a first statement. 
And to this effort may be charged the omission of 
some things and the light touch given to others. In 
short, if the reader carries' away from this book the 
one fundamental conception on which it is based, he 
will have all the author designs to give. 

November, 1893. 



ANALYSIS. 



The World Embodies the Meaning of God. 

PAGE 

Man Pre-eminent I 

The Physical World 2 

The Human World 5 

The Purpose of God 7 

God Interprets the World. 

General Considerations 10 

Heathen Systems 13 

Judaism 19 

Christianity : 

General Claims 20 

Sources : 

The Holy Spirit 25 

The Bible : 

Character and History 28 

Dominant Themes : 

The Sovereign God 31 

God's Word to Men 32 

The People of God 34 

The Purpose of God 35 

Unity of the Bible 37 

v 



PAGE 



VI ANAL YSIS. 

The Men Primarily Addressed. 

The Jews before Christ 39 

The Gentiles before Christ 46 

Christ Summarizes the Past 50 

He Adds to the Past : 

The Fatherhood of God 53 

The Triumph of Righteousness 55 

Immortality 56 

Philanthropy 59 

The Meaning of Life 60 

The Person of Christ 62 

The Christians 64 

The Divine Interpretation of the World. 
Teachings of the Bible : 

General Considerations 68 

The Attributes of God : 

His Power 73 

His Wisdom 76 

His Justice : 

Personal 78 

Administrative : 

General Considerations 79 

Law : 

Natural 81 

Of Conscience 82 

Biblical \ . . 89 

His Goodness 93 

The Nature of Man : 

His Eminence 97 



ANAL YSIS. Vll 



PAGE 



The Nature of Man {continued) : 

Perfect in Christ 98 

His Immortality 99 

Active Faculties : 

Reason 107 

Sentiment no 

Conscience 112 

Will 115 

Relations of Man to God : 

The Problem of Sin 130 

The Salvation of Christ : 
The Gospel Narrative : 

Historical Character 137 

Miracles 140 

The Work of Christ on Man : 

The Object 154 

The Means : 

Society 158 

The Church 163 

The Bible 174 

Inspiration 179 

The Holy Spirit 191 

The Method 198 

The Result : 

Salvation from Sorrow 202 

The Mystery of Evil 204 

Death 212 

Salvation from Sin : 

General Remarks 216 



Vlll ANAL VSLS. 

PAGE 

Salvation from Sin (continued} : 

Obstacles 220 

Enlightenment . 223 

Punishment 226 

Forgiveness 232 

Repentance 236 

Sanctification : 

General Remarks 240 

Work 241 

Association 242 

Bible Study 247 

Prayer 249 

The Holy Spirit 251 

God will be All in All. 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



i. 

GOD 127 THE WORLD. 

MAN is at once the product and the master of 
the world. At every point he is closely allied 
with his surroundings ; and yet some of his peculiar- 
ities — his size, his anatomical structure, his length of 
life, his power of adaptation to all climates and all 
foods — give him an immense advantage, which his 
mental endowments raise to an easy and immeasur- 
able mastery. Therefore we find him, at whatever 
stage of culture, using for his own ends the objects 
and forces of nature which surround him. But he 
does not at any stage do this as a foreign master. 
He is native to his state, and acts upon the world 
from within the world, and with constant reaction of 
the world upon himself. This gives rise to a con- 
tinual forward movement, a development of both man 
and the world ; for under his hand new resources con- 
tinually come to light in answer to his progressive de- 
mands, and this in such increasing ratio, that both the 



2 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

scientific and the popular mind have come to doubt 
whether man can develop any legitimate need for 
which nature has not a supply; while, on the other 
hand, his own development keeps pace with that 
which is thus produced in nature, and his demands 
forever rise. Out of this increasing action and reac- 
tion all the history of man's life has been evolved ; 
and it is not easy at first sight to decide whether the 
conditions of his physical environment have influenced 
the development of man, or his increasing mastery of 
the world has modified these conditions, in the larger 
degree. 

Nor is this a recent movement only. As far back 
as we can trace man's life, the same interaction be- 
tween him and nature is found. Indeed, there is no 
known condition of man, not even the rudest savagery 
or the remotest indications of his prehistoric days, in 
which he is not noticeable before all else for his 
attempts to control his surroundings, and for at least 
a partial success. We have no knowledge and no 
guess of any human existence not involved in this 
perpetual commerce with nature. 

When, however, we follow back the history of the 
physical world, the case seems at first entirely differ- 
ent. Compared with its vast duration, the period of 
man's existence becomes almost inconsiderable ; and 
nature may be said to have run her career and almost 



GOD IN THE WORLD. 3 

filled out her days before she was concerned with 
man. But a closer examination must modify this 
view. The present state of the earth, so perfectly 
adapted not to any one human condition, but to all 
the stages of man's progressive growth, is found to 
have resulted, without break or sudden change, from 
the entire sequence of geological history. * Step by 
step the unknown chaos of the beginning has evolved 
all its successive conditions, till the earth became 
what we know it. No point can be found which 
could serve as a commencement without supposing 
all that went before ; and conversely the present con- 
stitution of the earth seems to crown and fulfil all 
the past as its accomplished ' aim. Therefore, since 
the world is so perfectly fitted to human needs, man 
and man alone is the adequate end towards which 
the whole vast process points ; and although he came 
so late upon the scene, yet Nature must be judged 
to have foreknown her consummate offspring, and to 
have labored for his coming through all her years. 

Other lines of investigation add force to this con- 
clusion. To uncultivated men the surface of nature 
with which they come in contact seems simple ; but 
the first attempt at analysis shows that it is very 
complex. The earlier researches of science seemed 
to divide the natural field into many different and 



4 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

almost independent domains ; but the deeper study 
of our day finds all these inseparably united, so that 
the aggregate of surroundings which we call the world 
is a unit of innumerable parts and of the greatest 
complexity, but each portion is necessary to all the 
rest, and none could be what it is if all the others 
were not what they are. When, therefore, we find 
that the total front of nature with which man deals 
is adapted so perfectly to his wants that it is always 
ready to answer his new advances with new supplies, 
and that this is the result of the co-ordination of all 
nature's departments, we are more than ever im- 
pressed with the thought already suggested by geo- 
logical history. So great a complexity, resulting in 
so perfect an adaptation to man, and not to man as 
a constant factor, but to all stages of his'* advancing 
life, cannot be an environment to which he has casu- 
ally adjusted himself, but must be conceived as a 
premeditated result, having him for its object. 

Still another series of facts re-enforces this conclu- 
sion. The five or six thousand years of human his- 
tory of which we have some certain knowledge do not 
merely show a series of readjustments between man 
and nature, but they emphatically display a develop- 
ment wrought in man himself as the result of his 
own volitions combined with the reactions of his en- 
vironment, which combination constitutes the course 



GOD IN THE WORLD 5 

of human events. To the successive stages of this 
evolution nature has visibly contributed ; and not 
merely as the scene of action, but as often determin- 
ing by its own processes the course of events. The 
distribution of land and water, the course of rivers 
and of mountain chains, drought and pestilence, the 
varying fertility or sterility of lands and of races, the 
deposits of minerals, and the connection of foods 
with climates, have all effected the story of man's 
life. And since this story is not a jumble of aimless 
vicissitudes, but presents on the whole a sustained 
advance in human character and power, the thought 
becomes irresistible that the constitution and the pro- 
cesses of nature which contribute so much to this 
result must be the expression of a purpose as ancient 
as the beginning of material things, and powerful 
enough to control the world and all its parts. 

Now, this point being reached, or only vaguely sur- 
mised, a new element enters. 

At an early stage in his development man becomes 
conscious of himself. He knows within himself a 
power not bodily, by the exertion of which he mas- 
ters his own physical frame and bends to his pur- 
poses the things which surround , him. He knows 
what it is to form a purpose and hold to it through 
many actions ; what it is to assemble resources and 



6 THE PURPOSE OF GOD, 

combine them to his determined aim ; what it is to 
supply from within himself the power of will which 
overcomes all difficulties and issues in success. He 
is aware, too, that other men have and use the same 
powers, and he studies their works and acts to deter- 
mine their aims. 

Now, this inner man, looking on the world about 
him, recognizes, with the sure intuition of like-minded- 
ness, that the world expresses the same qualities of 
fixed purpose and dominant will which he knows in 
himself and sees in other men. At a low stage of 
intelligence he recognizes this fitfully and in isolated 
results ; as his mind broadens, his wider survey gives 
him a larger conception and a firmer grasp of the 
same thing; and the height of modern science, be- 
sides enlarging this view to embrace the universe, 
also adds the element of intensity to a degree which 
augments the force of an entire argument. 

For science not only reveals the great complexity of 
the world, but equally shows the harmony of this com- 
plex. The dominant charm of scientific research is 
not utility, but the fascination of a wonderful harmony, 
which the mind more and more comprehends, and 
finds more and more perfect. We tire of the babble 
of children or fools, and turn away with disgust from 
unmeaning words or aimless deeds ; but the thoughts 
of the ingenious or the wise attract and hold us with 



GOD IN THE WORLD. 7 

an educating power. Now, it is the latter and not the 
former impression which the study of nature and of 
the course of events makes on serious minds. We 
confront intelligence which answers more and more 
profoundly to our questioning, and a wise design be- 
yond all the ingenuity of man ; so that the deeper our 
study, the less are we disposed to imagine that it is we 
who impose thought upon nature, the more disposed 
to read, like the humblest pupils, in a book of bound- 
less wisdom. 

This study has brought us to the conception of God, 
and has given us far more than a sacred name or 
a conventional faith. The conception is of a great 
Intelligence, which fashioned the world from the first, 
and has conducted it through all its course, for the 
purpose of developing man's life, and which com- 
mands power so vast as to compass all its ends. 
This, however, throws no light on the objective point 
of God's action upon man through nature and life ; 
but there is another line of investigation which does. 

Experience has abundantly shown that the estab- 
lished course of nature tends to human welfare on 
the condition that man co-operate with that order ; 
while, on the other hand, nature steadily opposes, and 
always thwarts in the end, the efforts of men to act 
against her laws. Man's contact with nature, there- 



8 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

fore, subjects him to a constant system of rewards and 
punishments, which tend powerfully to bring him into 
harmony with nature's order. Now, since all the order 
of nature is the expression of God's purpose in nature, 
and since we have found this purpose directed always 
towards man, it follows that when man comes into co- 
operation with the laws of nature, he comes to this 
extent into harmony with God ; and, therefore, the 
purpose of God, in the ordering of the world, is to 
bring men into harmony with himself. 

But we can add another step to this. The whole 
action of nature has to do with man's welfare, even 
the oppositions and hardships of the natural world 
being a wholesome discipline which instructs and re- 
strains him for his good. And if we do not conceive 
too narrowly the ideas of human welfare and of man's 
co-operation with nature, we shall in this direction 
find our conception of God's purpose greatly enlarged. 

The welfare of man reaches from his simplest bodily 
needs to the highest possibilities of his spirit ; and he 
co-operates with nature or opposes it along this entire 
range. It is not merely that man adapts himself to 
climate and food, or establishes the social order which 
his individual weakness makes necessary ; besides 
such adaptations, the use of his mental and moral 
qualities lays nature under larger tribute to human 
welfare. Intelligence and will, industry, patience, and 



GOD IN THE WORLD. 9 

self-control make man far more the master of his sur- 
roundings than strength or passion ; and the more 
elaborate his uses of nature become, the more does 
his resulting welfare depend on these inward forces. 
So that when we come to consider the highest level of 
man's co-operation with nature, that, namely, at which 
he and his environment combine to produce the course 
of events, man's contribution to the result is found to 
be almost wholly spiritual, his physical activity being 
far surpassed by the brutes or the machines which he 
controls. 

The direct outcome, therefore, of man's interaction 
with the world is to call forth and exercise his nobler 
faculties, giving the mind its vast and rightful predom- 
inance over the body. And this result is at once an 
eminent degree of human welfare and the highest pos- 
sible harmony of man with nature, since in this way 
man sets himself to govern and use the world by the 
same powers which its Maker and Ruler employs. 
Hence the conclusion of our whole inquiry is that the 
purpose under which God has ordered and conducts 
the world is that man may be brought into harmony 
with God by the development of his spiritual powers, 
as being his highest welfare both in process and in 
result. And the means by which this is being effected 
is the experience of life. 



io THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



II. 

GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 

IT seems implied in this conception of God's pur- 
pose, that he would make some communication to 
men more definite than they can of themselves deduce 
from the world. And men have always believed them- 
selves to possess such communications. 

The first thing, in face of an alleged message from 
God, is to judge of its authenticity. This may rest 
either on our estimate of the messenger or on the im- 
pression which the message makes upon us. We are 
entitled to assume that an explicit message from God 
will harmonize with that which we learn of him from 
the order of nature and the course of events ; and 
since we have found these to disclose a divine purpose 
of educating man into harmony with God, we may 
begin by requiring that this purpose shall be not less, 
but more distinct, in both the messenger and the 
message. 

If our estimate of the messenger is to authenticate 
the message, it must be because the message which he 
brings has affected him as it is expected to affect us. 
Therefore no greatness which he may exhibit, for 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. II 

instance of social power or of learning, in the least 
authenticates any message he may deliver as of God, 
unless we find him, judged as a man like ourselves, to 
be in harmony with God. 

As to the message, we may consider it authentic so 
far as we find that it re-enforces the tendency of the 
world to bring man into harmony with God. And we 
may judge of this either by the effects observed in 
others, or, far better, by its influence upon ourselves. 
Indeed, this response of the soul is the most satisfac- 
tory and the most generally received of all tests. As 
we find in all nature correspondences between parts 
helpful to each other, and recognize that those sur- 
roundings are the most congenial amid which any liv- 
ing thing grows to its best state, so the quick response 
of our own hearts, and the ennobling influence upon 
our own lives, which follow certain teachings, become 
for us the best warrant that these are divine. 

Therefore, the only reliable test of the authenticity 
of alleged revelation is for each individual his own 
judgment of the effect produced by it on those who 
have received it, whether as prophet or as disciple. 

All attempts to evade this test fail. If miracle is 
alleged, still each must judge for himself whether a 
miracle has occurred, and, if so, whether the power it 
attests is in harmony with God or not. If the authority 
of the learned is appealed to, or the consensus of the 



12 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

multitude, still these have authority for the disciple 
only so far as he judges them to have it. Briefly, the 
object of divine revelation can only be to further the 
divine purpose which rules man ; and that only can be 
judged to be divine revelation which is first judged to 
have this tendency. 

A message from God to man is as much conditioned 
upon man's capacity to receive as upon God's willing- 
ness to communicate ; and man can receive any mes- 
sage only so far as it is expressed in terms, whether 
verbal or symbolic, of his own experience. If, there- 
fore, God has spoken variously to men, now to an 
individual, now to a nation or race, now a supreme 
word to all mankind, it must be expected that the 
terms of expression will be found as different as the 
experiences of those addressed. We must not, there- 
fore, so apply our test as to reject every alleged mes- 
sage which does not further our own education towards 
God ; but we are to consider of each whether it did 
this for those to whom it first came. And for decid- 
ing this we may use both our own judgment of its 
adaptedness and the testimony of history. 

Divine messages of local or temporary application 
can hardly be called revelation, which is an unveiling 
of God. They are rather a thinning of the veil, that 
through it God's movements may appear, authentic, 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 13 

indeed, but vague and blurred. If there be a true 
revelation, an actual unveiling of the infinite God, it 
must be expressed in terms which all men can to a 
useful degree apprehend, which cannot lose their mean- 
ing with varying circumstances, and which are capable 
of unfolding more and more divine meaning as the 
experience of life enlarges men's power of apprehen- 
sion. Such a revelation cannot be verbal. It must be 
expressed in an epitome of all human experience. It 
is found perfectly and exclusively in the person of 
Jesus Christ. 

But as other divine messages prepared the way for 
the coming of Christ, so a consideration of the others 
may prepare our minds to study him. 

There are scattered through history points of en- 
lightenment which seem either to express or to have 
caused a tendency to higher thoughts, but of which 
we can give no definite account. Such are the vague 
intimations in the Scandinavian mythology of the final 
destruction of their system and the incoming of some- 
thing better. Such is that secret wisdom of the 
Egyptians, to which so much has been attributed, of 
which so little is known. Such were the mysteries of 
the Greeks, the secret of which has been so marvel- 
lously kept, while their ennobling power was attested 
by many great minds. These and many more, less or 



14 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

not at all known to us, have doubtless furthered God's 
purpose, and may be fairly classed among his obscure 
messages to men. 

But there are seven systems which have avowed the 
purpose of bettering human life, and have proved their 
power by controlling for many centuries the conduct 
of vast numbers of mankind. Of these the Jewish 
and the Christian are reserved for later study. The 
others, namely, those of the Brahmans, of Buddha, 
of Confucius, of Zoroaster, and of Mohammed, while 
they differ much in special characteristics, have a cer- 
tain common feature which sets them aside from the 
other two. Each of the five fixes its regard upon a 
certain set of human conditions, which it finds exist- 
ing or which it prescribes, and makes full human 
attainment consist in perfect conformity to these. 
They have no note of progress. 

i. The Brahman, insisting that spirit is everything, 
and finding this hardly received by human nature, 
bends all his efforts to establish that belief. But 
neither does he offer any hope that mankind will attain 
this truth, nor does it appear what lies beyond for 
those who have attained it. There is neither present 
progress nor a future goal. 

2. The Buddhist, beginning with the assertion that 
life is the greatest possible calamity, seeks to ease it 
by deeds of self-sacrifice and kindness. But life 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN 15 

remains a calamity, and the only hope of peace is in a 
mysterious escape from life, which may be annihilation. 

3. Zoroaster, in a nobler vein, faces the evident con- 
flict between good and evil, and summons men to en- 
list for the good. He vaguely tells of the Infinite, 
greater than this strife, who will at last terminate it by 
the triumph of good. But the present struggle is not 
shown as one of progressive victory. The hundredth 
generation only repeats the hard warfare of the first ; 
and how the consummation is related to this long, 
weary history is not shown. 

4. Confucius aimed at the ordering of daily life. 
The future is to be merely a sequence of years, in 
which will be accurately repeated that which is already 
established. All is tied to the past and progress 
unconceived. 

5. Mohammed gave his followers the immense power 
which comes of the consciousness of God. Not only 
is God one, but he is omnipotent, and always concerned 
with us. But for this great engine no corresponding 
work is provided. Man is simply to conform to the 
existing conditions of life, age after age, with obedi- 
ence to certain formal requirements. Of any purpose 
by which the ever-present God is ruling the world, no 
hint is given. 

Of course, other religions might be named which 



1 6 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

are or have been of great local importance, and have, 
indeed, attracted much attention beyond the circle of 
their votaries. But these five are all which by their 
vast extension and their tenacious vitality have a 
claim to be considered here. 

Now, such widespread and persistent phenomena of 
man's mental history must certainly have been active 
agencies in God's hand. The Church has, naturally 
enough, regarded them at one or another time as 
rivals, and denounced and hated them ; and perhaps, 
under the pressure of active antagonism, nothing else 
could be expected. But when we remember the pur- 
pose of God and his infinite resources, it must seem 
presumption indeed to declare by what ways he may 
reach men for their good ; and if we consider the mul- 
titudes for whom these have been the only religion, if 
we read the nobler pages of their literatures, or study 
the best examples of character which each has pro- 
duced, nothing but the blindness of bigotry can keep 
back the belief that God has used these great agen- 
cies to bring his children, by ways not familiar to us, 
and in a sense we may not yet appreciate, nearer to 
himself. 

Each of them is based, as has been shown, on a 
great fundamental principle essential to man's highest 
life ; and through this, doubtless, each may open ac- 
cess between God and man. But life is too complex 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 17 

to be resolved into a single principle ; and, however will- 
ing we may be to believe that it answers God's pur- 
pose to approach great masses of men in this way, 
one group from one side and another from another, yet 
it is in the nature of the case that no one of these can 
fully suffice for man's complete education. Each car- 
ries its limitations in its very constitution ; and history 
plainly demonstrates this fact, for each has been in- 
separably allied with a stationary condition of society. 
As they give no incentive to progress, so neither 
can they adapt themselves to it ; and forward move- 
ments otherwise impelled immediately arouse a conflict. 
None of them, therefore, can assert any claim to be 
universal, either in the sense of sufficing for all men 
or as meeting all the wants of any. 

It is not easy to guess what may be the function 
of these great religions in the future development of 
God's purpose. A deep influence was evidently ex- 
erted upon the faith of the Jews by the doctrines of 
Zoroaster during the Captivity ; and the speculations 
of India affected the heresies, and perhaps indirectly 
the faith, of the early Christians. Analogous results 
may come in the future from the contact of the Gospel 
with the ethnic faiths. Certainly we already see a 
tendency to broader and simpler views of Christianity 
growing out of missionary work. It may even be that 
changes too complex or too radical for us to antici- 
pate will grow out of these associations. 



l8 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

These religions belong to the vast, unmoving, con- 
servative majority of mankind, which remains from 
century to century unchanged ; while that progressive 
movement of human development which we have 
seen corresponds to the course of nature, has for the 
last twenty-rive centuries belonged to the European 
minority. It cannot be that this distinction is to con- 
tinue. Indeed, our day is witnessing the beginnings 
of movement in many parts of this long stagnant 
majority. And it may be conjectured that when the 
Asiatic peoples enter at last into the course of prog- 
ress, the contributions which they will certainly make 
to the world's life will somehow be found identified 
with their religions. All of these, except the Moham- 
medan, had their origin in a remote past, before the 
rise of European life, and at a time when the vigor 
and progress of the world lay in Asia. It may be 
that the Asiatic religions will be found to have trans^ 
mitted across all these sleeping centuries some prod- 
ucts of man's earliest vitality which European life has 
not reproduced. The discoveries of our time continu- 
ally bring to light the surprising attainments of the 
earliest men in construction and art, in jurisprudence 
and business ; why may we not suppose that they 
made in the spiritual field equally surprising attain- 
ments which lie buried and unguessed under the vast 
accumulations of the centuries ? If there be any 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 19 

truth in this conjecture, of course it will appear just 
in proportion as the life of the West mingles with and 
understands the patient conservatism of the East. It 
is certain that the East needs the West : it may be 
that the West cannot run its full course without the 
East. 

Judaism is a dual system. On the one hand, it 
legislates for a certain race, for certain social condi- 
tions. Its whole -history proves that it tends to inten- 
sify racial feelings, and to isolate those whom it rules. 
Thus viewed, Judaism is therefore as unfit as any sys- 
tem yet considered to be called universal or a revela- 
tion. But, on the other hand, there runs through all 
the life of Israel a higher strain. God is announced 
as ruling all nations for his own purpose. The triumph 
of this purpose is declared to be constantly preparing, 
and its consummation sure. Nor is this a subordinate 
strain. It appears at the very beginnings of the race, 
and, running through all its history, dominates the 
noblest minds, and increases its vehemence at every 
crisis. It sets righteousness before ceremonial, the 
pure heart before the ordered life. 

This second aspect presents us with a view not 
even suggested in any of the other systems. The 
fervor and emphasis of Judaism pass quite beyond 
outward and accessory things, and deal with that in 



2 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

man which is universal ; and they deal with it for its 
development and greatening. Here, then, seems at 
first a glimpse of universal religion, the true unveiling 
of God. But in the many centuries of Jewish history 
we find the narrow race prejudices always growing 
tighter. The voice of seer and prophet telling of 
broader relations is interpreted down to the people's 
narrowness ; and if we had not the original literature 
of the Jews we should not learn from their history that 
their system differed from those already condemned. 

If, too, we try to frame the larger utterances of the 
Old Testament into a system apart from the ceremo- 
nial law, we find it both fragmentary and vague, — 
marvellous beginnings, but nothing complete. It is 
obviously the prophecy and origin of something yet 
unfinished. Here was a people intrusted with a 
message too great for their understanding, — a mes- 
sage which stimulates and awakens large expectation, 
but points always to an unrevealed future ; and yet a 
message which seems capable, if only a little more 
were added, of reaching and satisfying all mankind. 
Judaism was not the light, but came that it might bear 
witness of the light. The sequel of Judaism is the 
Gospel. 

Before we examine the teachings of the Gospel, it 
is evident from its external history that it has pre- 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 21 

sumptive claims to be the universal religion. And 
the characteristics which will be mentioned under this 
head have marked it from its earliest public appear- 
ance to this day, with fluctuations, of course, but with 
a sequence easily traced through all its history. 

i. The Gospel addresses itself to man without mak- 
ing the slightest account of race or social condition, 
and it prescribes no external conditions as indispen- 
sable. And every race and social condition has fur- 
nished disciples ready to live or die for their faith. 

2. The Gospel mingles with all the affairs of human 
life, to select and sustain everything that can be made 
to contribute to human welfare, and to denounce and 
combat whatever works harm to man. 

3. The Gospel has found its firmest footing, and 
won its greatest triumphs, in connection with the por- 
tion of mankind most advanced in intelligence and 
energy. 

4. At every crisis in its history, when the Gospel 
seemed most in danger of overthrow by assimilating 
the hostile elements of the world, it has undergone a 
process of reinvigoration from within by a return to its 
original evidence and charter, the person of Jesus 
Christ ; and having renewed its strength and purity 
by reverting to him, it has resumed its place at the 
front of that movement which makes for the increasing 
welfare of mankind. 



22 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

5. After every such crisis the Gospel is seen to have 
acquired from the study of its Original, increase and 
energy; so that it appears to have in him an unex- 
hausted source of growing fitness for the changing 
conditions of human life. 

These characteristics set the Gospel far apart from 
all the other schemes of religion, and warrant for it the 
title of universal. But this term is so open to miscon- 
struction, and is, indeed, so sadly misconstrued, that it 
needs to be here denned by a careful discussion. Any 
numerical meaning is of course excluded. After two 
thousand years, less than a quarter of the men now liv- 
ing are nominally Christians; and it would be both 
difficult and painful to guess how small may be the 
fraction of nominal Christians who deserve the name. 
Nor is it much more to the point to understand that 
this is the religion which will in time supersede all 
others, so that all who are alive at some future epoch 
will be Christians. The imagination needs only to 
summon the hosts who have lived and died, who will 
yet live and die, without so much as hearing whether 
there be any gospel, to put away such a claim for uni- 
versality. We must look, therefore, in quite another 
direction. 

It has been shown that we may believe God to have 
purposed the final harmony of mankind with himself, 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 23 

and that from the beginning of the world the constitu- 
tion of man and of his surroundings, as well as all the 
events of general or personal history, have been di- 
rected by the divine wisdom to this end. Now, this is 
the aim of the Gospel, — is its whole meaning. But since 
this process had been going on for thousands of years 
before the Gospel appeared, and has gone on for the 
great majority of mankind without the name of Christ 
to this day, Christianity, viewed as a phenomenon, is 
only a slender current flowing in the ocean of human 
being. And yet the more we become acquainted with 
the minds of non-Christian men, whether in the past or 
the present, the more resemblance do we find between 
the ideas and sentiments which the experience of life 
begets in these men and those of Christians. So that 
we may recognize the hand of God working out his 
purpose by all the agencies which touch or have 
touched men's spiritual nature. 

And yet with this perception of resemblance there 
goes a perpetual apprehension of difference. When- 
ever we compare the spiritual experiences of those out- 
side the Gospel with similar experiences among true 
Christians, we find in the former a weary repetition of 
beginnings wliich lead to no end, streams of living 
water which presently evaporate into mystical specula- 
tion or are lost in the sands of worldliness. Only the 
Gospel has taught men a sustained spirituality which 



24 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

is able to deal freely and cheerfully with all the circum- 
stances of life, to draw from them those divine mes- 
sages with which all are charged, and to acquire 
through this experience at once an increasing nearness 
to God and a surer dominion over the world. The 
Gospel, therefore, is the demonstration in life and the 
expression to human understanding of that universal 
process by which God pours his influence upon men. 
Without this, men are swept along their course by a 
power they do not know, are terrified or lured by voices 
in the dark, are taught the rudiments of a knowledge 
in which they can perceive at this stage neither use nor 
promise. With this, they are conscious sons of God, 
dwelling in their Father's house, learning in their 
Father's school, tending through all the experience 
which he appoints to harmony with him. The disci- 
pline of life by which God embraces in his purpose all 
the sons of men, is the universal fact. The revelation 
of God in Christ, by which he makes us conscious of 
his purpose and fellow-workers with him, is the univer- 
sal religion. It means whatever is elsewhere meant ; 
it does what is nowhere else accomplished, but is 
needed by all. 

When we look within the Christian Church for the 
sources of so much power, we find a multitude of sects, 
with diverse claims, each offering to show us the full 
truth. But much as they differ, all these divisions of 



GOD COMMINICATES WITH MAN. 25 

Christians agree that the Gospel is conveyed by two 
divine gifts, — a body of revealed truth which largely 
concerns the intellect, and a force which acts directly 
on the emotions and the will, called the Holy Spirit. 

The Holy Spirit is, of course, a subject of doctrinal 
statement; but it is universally recognized that the 
action of the Spirit is independent of intellectual cor- 
rectness, and touches the heart either without the inter- 
vention of perceptible means or by the agency of any 
means that may be available. By the agreement of all 
Christians the action of the Holy Spirit is God's con- 
stant contribution, as the revelation of truth is his 
occasional contribution, to the spiritual life of man; 
and this constant touch of God on the hearts of be- 
lievers explains the persistent vitality of the Gospel 
and its renewals from age to age. At a later stage 
this subject will command our close attention. 

Concerning divine truth, there is much more wide 
and positive disagreement among the divisions of 
Christendom. Each body offers a system of doctrine 
which it holds to be the best expression of truth. 
But when these systems are compared they are found 
to be so different, and even contradictory, they are 
so obviously the work of human minds progressively 
amending the statements of predecessors, and they so 
evidently strive to express something which lies be- 
hind them all, that the seeker after truth is forced to 



26 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

conclude that the formal doctrines of Christians are 
far from being identical with the very truth of God. 
And yet these doctrines have held the attention and the 
regard of the best minds for many ages. While each 
new generation has sought to improve them, none have 
been willing to throw them entirely away ; and to the 
most radical minds of the present many of them ap- 
peal with a force that is only half confessed. Under 
these circumstances the natural course of an indepen- 
dent thinker is to go back of the doctrines to their 
sources, and discover, if he can, what is that divine 
truth which they seek to express. 

Three sources of Christian doctrine are alleged : 
the consensus of believers, the official declarations of 
the Church, and the Bible. 

Consensus is the public opinion of the Church ; and, 
like public opinion in all communities, it wields an 
immense force. But it is rather censor than author. 
By the nature of the case, doctrine must be proposed 
for its acceptance before it can approve or reject. 
While, therefore, it has played, and must always play, a 
most important part in selecting and establishing state- 
ments of the truth, it is evident that consensus pre- 
supposes a discovery and publication of the truth 
preceding its action ; and he who is seeking sources 
must look beyond it. Besides, since the consensus of 
believers passes upon the doctrinal statement pro- 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 27 

posed, there must be in the minds of the believers some 
standard of judgment antecedent to doctrinal state- 
ments, something which the Christian consciousness 
does not fully grasp, but which it is able to com- 
pare with any formula of belief, so as to approve or 
reject. 

In this way we are certified of the existence of 
divine truth in the souls of believers, but vague and 
seeking expression. Now, the only way in which we 
can account for such an element in the Christian con- 
sciousness is to regard it as the outcome of the expe- 
rience of life when guided by Christian influences. 
And this conception opens to our view, what all history 
demonstrates, the long course of man's spiritual edu- 
cation effected by the divine guidance through the 
impressions of daily life, without the intervention of 
doctrinal understanding. Now, what we are seeking 
is some point at which God's meaning in this process 
may become intelligible to our minds ; and this, it is 
evident, must be elsewhere than in those unconscious 
effects of the process which are the groundwork of 
consensus. 

If we turn next to ecclesiastical authority, we shall 
much more easily conclude that this is no source of 
truth, for reasons already named. The work of men's 
minds marks all the formulas of all the churches ; and 
consequently creeds which give equal evidence of 



28 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

learning and ability flatly contradict each other. Be- 
sides, the history of Christian doctrine as promulgated 
by authority shows plain and constant progression 
in almost every particular, a constant striving after 
clearer understanding and better expression of some- 
thing which exists before and outside of the creed or 
the deliberations which construct it. But this antece- 
dent something is that which we are seeking as better 
and more authoritative than doctrine. We seek the 
sources from which the formulators of doctrine have 
derived it. 

Finally, when we turn to the Bible, an entirely differ- 
ent view is presented. Not only does Christian his- 
tory show that all the deeper and more vital doctrines 
which the Church has formulated and the consensus 
of believers has ratified, have been deduced from the 
Bible as their source, but the character of this book 
meets every test which we have already found ap- 
propriate to a divine revelation. It offers very few 
doctrinal formulas, and those only of the broadest 
character. It pictures in all phases the life of man, 
and this in such a way as always to suggest a divine 
meaning in life. It therefore expresses the message of 
God to man in terms of human life which, as experi- 
ence has proved, all men can understand and appro- 
priate in proportion to the spiritual capacity of each. 
And finally, its range is so wide and its touch so 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 29 

masterly that the endless variety of human needs has 
not at any point exhausted its teaching. We may con- 
clude, therefore, that we have in the Bible a unique 
deposit of divine truth, so conveyed as to lend itself 
readily to that intellectual process by which doctrine is 
elaborated. How the deposit has come to exist, and 
what relation it holds to the teaching of experience, 
will appear as we proceed. We must now pass to a 
more particular study of the Bible. 

The history of the Bible is quite unparalleled in 
literature. In its gradually accumulating parts, or as a 
whole, it has been considered sacred for at least twenty- 
seven centuries. Its parts, furnished by the hands 
of many writers running through at least a thousand 
years, have been readily recognized as belonging to- 
gether ; and for sixteen centuries the collection which 
we now have has been held by the whole Christian 
Church as a single harmonious volume containing the 
revelation of God. 

The Bible has been prominent and valued just in 
proportion to the general enlightenment of each age. 
It has engaged the highest skill and learning of 
scholars for attack or defence ; and the present age, 
after so many struggles, is as deeply interested in the 
questions which gather about the Bible as any of the 
past. Each successive generation, with all its changes 



30 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

of social conditions and moral advancement, has found 
the Bible fully abreast of its best attainments; and 
while constantly detecting and abandoning the mis- 
conceptions which had gathered about it, has discov- 
ered in its pages new light and truth which lower 
stages of culture had not perceived. 

But equally remarkable is the fact that the Bible 
has been as important to unlettered Christians as to 
scholars. It has submitted, without loss of its great 
characteristics, to translation into every vernacular ; 
and under all skies, and in every tongue, has com- 
forted the sorrows, enlarged the hope, quickened the 
conscience, and ennobled the character of men, women, 
and children. Nor have these two phases of interest 
ever proved hostile or ceased to be connected. The 
most learned scholars have prized the Bible for its 
spiritual influence upon themselves ; and to its un- 
lettered readers this book has been a powerful mental 
stimulus, promoting culture, broadening thought, fur- 
thering civilization. 

Such being the external history of the Bible, we 
come to an examination of its contents with profound 
respect and a confident expectation of finding here the 
divine word. 

The reader of the Bible finds a collection of writings 
produced by Jews of every social position, and scat- 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 31 

tered along many centuries of national history. Every 
form of literature is represented, but the proportion of 
the didactic is surprisingly small. The contents are 
pictures of life, public and private, rude and refined, 
evil and good; but abstractions and wide generaliza- 
tions are comparatively rare, and such as occur are 
mostly based on facts present to the writer. The 
dominant characteristic of the whole book is that it 
deals with current human life. 

Different as the several writings of the Bible seem 
at first sight, they are harmonized by four conceptions 
which run through them all, and each of which may be 
traced in them from its early but positive germ through 
many stages of development to perfect completion. 
These we must consider in order. 

/. The Sovereign God. The Bible is based from end 
to end on the conception of one almighty God. In no 
writer does there appear a single thought which opposes 
this ; and even where the conception is not taught, 
it is obviously the conscious background of the writer's 
thought. In the first sentence of the Bible, God appearj 
as the maker of heaven and earth ; he assumes, when 
man enters, the additional character of a judge of con- 
duct ; and a little later he is represented as rewarding 
the trusting heart. This threefold conception of his 
character is the germ out of which all that follows is 
developed. 



32 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

Till the history is far advanced, the dominant idea is 
that of power, whether as ruling the course of nature 
and of events, or as commanding the conduct of men. 
Gradually the idea of moral government grows stronger, 
at first displayed in crises, but later consolidating into 
a code by which men are to be judged. But through 
all are occasional glimpses of God seeking the hearts 
of men ; and in the mouths of the prophets this swells 
to the dominant strain, so that the divine power is 
cited mostly to break impenitent hearts, and obedience 
is set above code and ritual. At this stage we reach 
the New Testament, and in the words of Jesus find 
God portrayed as the Father of men, yearning over 
and seeking us, comforting our sorrows, forgiving our 
sins, seeking to make us by all means partakers of his 
righteousness. The wonders of his power and the 
rigors of his judgment-seat have become but acces- 
sories, the least among the agencies of saving grace. 

//". God's Word to Men. The writers of the Bible 
uniformly represent God as seeking to communicate 
with men. It is nowhere suggested that he is remote 
or difficult of access. The burden of the strain always 
is that God is speaking, and men are warned, urged, 
entreated to hear. 

The occasions and the methods of divine utterance 
are variously conceived. At first God intervenes at dif- 
ficult crises to keep or set men right, and his word is 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 33 

simply stated to have come, without any hint of the 
channel. Later is found a body of divine instruction, 
partly given as a definite code, partly gathered by de- 
grees from passing experiences, to which the current 
life of men is referred for guidance, and by which they 
are judged. But at no time does the custom cease of 
direct, special communications from God in reference 
to existing needs. At a still later stage the prophets 
direct their divine messages generally to the people, 
with a wider sweep of meaning both in space and in 
time, and with far more searching application to the 
spiritual needs and defects of men. Thus was pre- 
pared, through many centuries and many phases of 
human experience, that habit of intercourse between 
God and man which grew to its full development in 
Jesus Christ. At no time is the divine word abstract 
or mystical. It was always based upon human affairs 
and expressed in terms of human life, being age by age 
adapted to the conditions of each time, and always 
according with the lessons, rightly read, of man's fa- 
miliar experience. 

This method is closely followed when Christ appears, 
claiming to bring God's perfect message. He comes 
to make God fully known, to reveal him, not for doc- 
trinal or philosophical purposes, but that the knowl- 
edge of God may win and comfort men's hearts ; and 
not by definitions or the forms of creeds, but by per- 



34 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

sonal exhibition of the divine character in the guise of 
a human life. All that had been attempted of divine 
communication to man, for warning, for rebuke, for 
instruction, for comfort under the burden of sorrow, 
and triumph in the face of death, was here summed up 
and carried to its ultimate in a life easy to be under- 
stood of all men. It was that, and all of that, which 
God had to say to men — his Word. 

Ill The People of God. Throughout the Bible we 
find the idea that a part of the human race stands 
more directly related to God than the rest. This con- 
ception begins with Abraham, descends like a heredi- 
tary possession to his children, and becomes the 
familiar and cherished distinction of the Jews. The 
narrative shows that the chosen people considered 
themselves selected by God for the bestowment of 
favors ; but it is made equally clear that the divine 
purpose had chosen them for discipline. Of course, 
the former conception was more easy for a rude, the 
latter for an advanced, social state ; but at no point, 
not even the very first, is the idea of discipline want- 
ing in God's communications, and by degrees it grows 
to be with the prophets the central thought. They 
plainly represent God as having through all their his- 
tory set the Jews before the nations as an enduring 
example of his moral government. 

When we pass to the New Testament the same ele- 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 35 

ments of thought appear, but advanced to a much 
higher stage, and blended into a conception wholly 
foreign to the mind of the Jew, and yet legitimately 
the outgrowth of his narrower belief. The racial 
claim to divine favor is entirely put aside. God can 
raise from the stones children to Abraham, and all 
kindreds and nations are alike before him. But still 
God is to have among the families of the earth a 
peculiar people, consisting of all those who give their 
hearts to him through Christ, the children not of Abra- 
ham's loins, but of his faith. And they are to be knit 
into a community enjoying special intercourse with 
God. Nor is this union of the faithful merely a men- 
tal conception. They are to be infused with the divine 
Spirit, which will ally them most intimately with each 
other and with God, and which welcomes into an 
equally close sympathy every soul that comes to Christ. 
For it is made plain that this fellowship is open to 
all men, and, indeed, is intended for all, the single 
condition being allegiance to Christ the Lord. 

IV. God's Purpose for His People. The Bible is 
pervaded by a cheerful forward look. No disappoint- 
ment or delay can quench this expectation of good to 
come. Its moralists use but few reminiscences except 
when they recall the mercies of God ; but their golden 
age in the future is never forgotten. And they always 
base this expectation on the divine promises. The 



36 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

narrative of the first sin is not completed without a 
record of promise, — the seed of the woman shall bruise 
the serpent's head. Considering the obviously alle- 
gorical character of the whole story, we cannot doubt 
that this promise is an allegory of man's triumph over 
evil, vague indeed, but suggesting indefinite extent and 
clearly moral in its nature. So broad and lofty an 
assurance at so early a day seems quite beyond the 
thought of the time, and plainly marks the finger of 
God. 

The conception rapidly changes as the Old Testa- 
ment history goes on. To Abraham the promise is 
given with more definitely universal extent, but the 
moral quality is unexpressed ; and as the chosen people 
gradually grasped their peculiar privilege, they more 
and more assumed the hope of the future to be espe- 
cially for them. More and more, too, they made it 
to consist in material good, — numbers, wealth, domin- 
ion. And yet the moral character was always retained 
to some degree by conditioning all these blessings 
upon obedience. 

With the increasing spirituality of the psalmists and 
the prophets the moral idea comes greatly to predomi- 
nate. All divine favor rests on righteousness, but the 
rewards of righteousness are still material blessings ; 
and this leads to a singular fulness (or perhaps con- 
fusion) of thought. So inextricably is the traditional 



GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MAN. 37 

conception of God's blessings entangled with the 
larger inspiration, that it is impossible to separate in 
their utterances the promise of material success from 
the prediction of triumphant righteousness. In the 
same breath they often seem to declare the near resto- 
ration of a living king, and to predict the Messiah's 
reign, But in the New Testament all the confusion 
has passed away, while the forward look re'mains. 
That which God has always pointed to in the future is 
now proclaimed to be that men shall be partakers of 
his holiness. The obstacles which inhere in our nature 
and surroundings are fully recognized, and their over- 
throw and removal are provided for in Christ, the head 
of every man, the universal Saviour. 

These four strains running through the Bible give 
it a coherence and unity which the literary charac- 
ter of the parts could not bestow. Any one of them 
would stamp as remarkable the book which contained 
it ; but the four related conceptions moving consis- 
tently through the writings of so many men in so 
many ages, and together growing from such simple 
beginnings to such triumphant greatness, mark the 
Bible as unique, and prepare us to find in its teach- 
ings the largest justification of its external history. 

From such a view we return with surprise to the 
fact that the Bible consists of many and most various 



38 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

writings, and ask how these were co-ordinated. The 
answer is easily found. Every author was either Jew 
or Christian ; every book relates to the affairs or ex- 
periences of Jews or Christians ; it is everywhere 
obvious that the writer addresses himself to one or 
the other class : and the only account which can be 
given of the selection and preservation of these writ- 
ings, while many similar ones were rejected or lost, 
is that the Church, Jewish or Christian, found and 
continued to find in these the message and revelation 
of God. How there came to be such writings for the 
Church to select, advancing step by step through the 
successive ages, is a deeper question which will find 
its answer as we proceed. 

The Bible, therefore, is the book of the people of 
God, made concerning them, by them, for them, and 
by their spiritual insight recognized and revered. And 
this book of the people of God becomes the book of 
all mankind only because its consummate revelation is 
that God intends all mankind to become his people. 



THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 39 



III. 

THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 

WE have already seen that the accomplishment 
of a revelation must depend as well on those 
who receive as on him who gives ; and therefore the 
meaning of the Bible must stand in constant relation 
to the character and condition of God's people. In 
order, therefore, to understand the Word we must first 
become acquainted with the history of the people of 
God in the successive ages, not merely as they appear 
in the Bible, but with all the light which history af- 
fords ; and not merely during the ages which produced 
the Scriptures, but down to our day. For the use of 
the Bible and the results of its use, during the Chris- 
tian centuries, should afford us the best possible test 
of the wisdom which chose and kept these writings, 
and of the authority with which they speak to us. 
We have next to study, then, the people of God. 

The Jews first appear in history, perhaps in the 
fourteenth century before Christ, as a horde of slaves 
escaped from Egypt. To the characteristics of the 
race, since so well known, they then added all the 



40 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

moral results of slavery. Retaining traditions of pa- 
triarchal ancestors, they were inseparably united by 
the common descent. They were easily kindled to 
enthusiasm, and easily led by a strong mind ; but it 
was impossible to hold them to any purpose. They 
set out for the country of their fathers, but shrank in 
fear at the first view of its warlike inhabitants. They 
accepted the covenant offered in the name of Jehovah, 
and vowed obedience ; but every difficulty made them 
murmur, and at the first opportunity they relapsed 
into the idolatry of Egypt. It was only when the 
generation of slaves had died wandering in the desert, 
and a new people of freemen had grown up in that 
hard school, that they were fit to conquer and occupy 
the promised land. 

Then followed an undetermined period of national 
development in which we see them, between the wild 
tribes of the desert on one side, and an elaborate, 
wealthy, and sensual civilization on the other, pass 
through endless vicissitudes of defeat and victory, 
always gaining in numbers and in their hold upon 
the territory over which they were spread ; always 
held most firmly together by the bond of common 
descent, and gradually growing in culture, institutions, 
and character. About iooo B.C. their prosperity cul- 
minated under David and Solomon, and for two gen- 
erations they had some political importance. But the 



THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 41 

civil wars and general decadence which began abruptly 
after Solomon's death show how little basis the nation 
had for any eminent station. After three hundred 
years of increasing wretchedness the larger kingdom 
was exterminated by foreign conquerors, and a cen- 
tury later Judah met the same fate. But Judah, hav- 
ing spent two generations in Babylon, returned again 
by the sufferance of her masters, and renewed on the 
old ground a shadow of national existence, the tribu- 
tary and plaything of the great powers about her. 
The history is then a blank till the native spirit 
blazes up in the brilliant episode of the Maccabees ; 
but presently the strong hand of Rome repressed 
the national life, and finally, in the first Christian 
century, ended the national existence. 

Considered from the political side, the history of 
the Jews is meagre and unworthy of regard. They 
showed no genius for founding a State ; their territory 
was smaller under Herod than under Gideon; they 
added nothing to the common heritage of mankind 
in social institutions, nor in the arts of peace or war. 
If Israel had been left to work out and endure his 
destiny as other nations are, he would to-day be but 
the shadow of a name. And yet no nation since the 
world began, not Rome herself, has so occupied the 
attention of mankind. All men have conquered Israel, 



42 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

but none have subdued him. Subjected for three 
thousand years to all possible disintegrating causes, 
and to all fortunes except great prosperity, the Jews 
yet remain, as they have never for a day ceased to be, 
a homogeneous people, known and recognized by all 
the world. And the phenomenon was the same in 
ancient times as now. While the petty nation in 
Judea was hardly maintaining itself, its wandering 
sons had traversed and influenced the world. Egypt, 
Babylon, Persia, all parts of the Roman Empire, had 
to reckon with these subtle strangers. This marvel- 
lous phenomenon, single in history, grew from the 
fact that the Jews were the people of God, chosen 
for a purpose. 

It is evident that they had not for long ages chosen 
God. Despite the ancestral covenant they had been 
idolatrous in Egypt, and at every apparent relaxation 
of the hand of Moses they returned to their idols. 
The new generation no sooner came in contact with 
the sensual worship of Moab, than they plunged eagerly 
into it ; and after they had become established in 
Palestine they readily adopted the practices of their 
neighbors, sometimes going all lengths, but oftener 
blending the worship of Jehovah and of idols in a 
manner not to us comprehensible. Every page of the 
Old Testament records the warnings, rebukes, and 
judgments of God, and every page, too, the backslid- 



THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 43 

ings of the people. Even the piety of David and the 
wisdom of Solomon left many idols for Hezekiah and 
Josiah to destroy ; and it was not till the remnant had 
returned from Babylon that the people whom God had 
chosen chose also him. For a thousand years the 
struggle had continued. A stiff-necked people had 
fought ten centuries, through all degrees of social 
advancement and all vicissitudes of fortune, to escape 
from the hand of God ; but through all he had never 
permitted them to forget him, and had made visible 
his rule, till at last, winnowed and chastened by afflic- 
tion, they had learned forever their great lesson, " The 
Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." Since that time 
they have endured for five and twenty centuries the 
strangest fortunes known to human history, but never 
once has it been heard that a Jew bowed down to 
idols. The primary postulate of true religion has 
become ingrained in the constitution of a whole race, 
and that race has been scattered to bear its witness 
wherever men exist. 

It is of the first importance to observe by what 
process this was accomplished. It was by no break- 
ing away from the usual course of national life, for 
Israel had all the stages of development common to 
his neighbors. To these the only peculiarity of the 
Jews appeared to be an unintelligible theory about 



44 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

a Supreme Being ; otherwise they moved side by side 
with the nations around them. And yet they were 
always beset by God, who entered into their life and 
mingled with their concerns by that channel which he 
has always reserved for his access to mankind, — great 
men. 

The average man is the product of his time and 
of all that went before. But great men in all nations 
have been' the producers of their own times, and still 
more of the times which followed. Descent, educa- 
tion, opportunity, account for so much of the lives of 
great men as they share with their contemporaries ; 
but the cause of each one's greatness beyond the thou- 
sands who share his circumstances, remains unsolved 
by any study of human antecedents. And when the 
long stretch of history is surveyed, it is so obviously 
the great men who have led the march, that if we 
attribute to God any efficient direction of man's des- 
tiny, we must recognize great men as his channels of 
access. 

It was so in Israel. Along these thousand years of 
struggle the banner of Jehovah was passed from hand 
to hand of a series of men in all respects closely fitted 
to their times, but always with open vision of that 
which Israel would not see. They occupied whatever 
station the occasion might require, — statesman, sol- 
dier, scholar, young or old, king or peasant, quickly 



THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 45 

spent or enduring a lifetime, not otherwise different 
from their people than that they were men of high 
endowments, and the spirit of God was in them. In 
other nations the divine purpose had wrought by great 
men raised up, doubtless, for their special ends, but 
ignorant what power impelled them. In Israel, since 
the very aim of all was that the people should know 
Jehovah, his servants must be conscious of their call- 
ing, and do his will with proclamation of his name. 

By this universal method, then, adapted to this spe- 
cial purpose, God brought it to pass that by the time 
Christ came there had been in the world for four or 
five centuries a peculiar people, who, having struggled 
against him for a thousand years, had at last been 
conquered, not by destruction, but by complete con- 
version, and had now for many generations proclaimed 
in the face of all the world that he alone is God. So 
that the foundation was ready and seasoned, — the 
fundamental beginning of all true faith. The sover- 
eign rule of God is assumed on every page of the New 
Testament. It needs no argument to establish it and 
no experience to test it. The new word is, " Ye believe 
in God, believe also in me." 

From this point it might seem that the work was 
simply to go on in the same lines ; that the new people 
of God were to be the children of the old. But the 
teaching of the New Testament and the subsequent 



46 THE PURPOSE OF GOD, 

course of history alike contradict the thought. This 
great foundation being established as an inextricable 
part of human history, there was now to be built upon 
it a new faith broad enough for all mankind, — the 
universal religion. The Jews had been perforce con- 
centrated ; their whole thought was narrow and tribal. 
To form a people who could receive the universal reve- 
lation, other elements of human development must be 
combined with that which had been taught to Israel. 
And since these new elements must bring with them the 
qualities of breadth and human power, it must needs 
be that while God had been training the Jews for 
their part, he had been elsewhere conducting another 
development of mankind, which should be ready, when 
Christ came, to contribute for the new people of God 
that which Israel could not furnish. 

The world into which Christ came was the Roman 
Empire. This vast conglomerate assembled within 
itself all that man had hitherto achieved in every de- 
partment ; and the best of all, dominating all, was the 
Grecian culture. 

Five or six centuries before Christ the Greeks 
emerged from their obscure past, to which all pre- 
ceding civilizations seem to have contributed, and 
pushed rapidly forward to an intellectual greatness 
before unknown. In politics, social order, philosophy, 



THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 47 

literature, art, they opened new paths, and became the 
great examples and teachers of mankind. The im- 
portance and the possibilities of the individual man 
for the first time came boldly to sight, and the bound- 
less opportunity of human culture and advancement 
first appeared. They lacked only the genius for 
organization to become the masters of the world. 
This want was for a moment supplied by the great 
Macedonian ; and the civilization of the Greeks, mar- 
shalled by the half-barbarian Alexander, swept all the 
East with conquest. But the unity was transient. As 
soon as the master-hand slackened, the individualism 
of the Greeks again asserted itself, splitting the great 
empire into new states, all of which, however, had 
been seeded with the Hellenic culture. 

Meanwhile, Rome had been slowly growing in the 
west. With a power of organizing which had never 
before appeared, she had grown strong within, and had 
then attacked, subdued, and incorporated kingdom 
after kingdom, till at length she was mistress of the 
entire Mediterranean basin. Nor was it a mere con- 
quest of arms. Under her sway every people, indeed, 
enjoyed its own language, its own institutions ; but so 
complete was the incorporation that all constituted 
one empire. Within the Roman borders universal 
peace prevailed. Travel was safe and easy by land 
and sea ; commerce flourished ; justice was adminis- 



4§ THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

tered; order prevailed. Only the turbulent or the 
zealously patriotic had any grievance. The common 
man everywhere was at peace in physical content. 
But over all these lands the culture of the Greeks 
spread and ruled. The common language of the world 
was Greek. Literature, philosophy, art, followed Gre- 
cian models. The Greeks, scattered everywhere, were 
the schoolmasters of the nations. 

The motives, then, of this great civilization were 
two, — the unbounded culture of the individual and 
the endless possibilities of union. 

In all this history God had veiled himself. True, he 
had not been without witness, for the instinctive de- 
mand of the soul for something higher had led to 
many religions. But these were only adjuncts to the 
political and social life, never, as in Israel, its primary 
force. The stage had been cleared, that man might 
try what he could make of himself and the world 
without visible aid from above. And the human race 
had been sifted for long centuries to separate in the 
two rival peninsulas the choicest strains of humanity 
for this great discipline. 

The result was magnificent. The world cannot hope 
to see the experiment again so fairly tried nor so bril- 
liantly successful. And yet the very hour of achieve- 
ment was the beginning of disappointment. A deadly 



THE PEOPLE OF GOD. 49 

weariness was growing over men's minds. The world 
seemed small and dull. Art was degenerating ; philos- 
ophy had divided into many contending sects ; social 
life was aimless and vicious ; numberless superstitions 
found votaries ; and the wisest men looked hopelessly 
to the future. The struggles of so many ages seemed 
after all to have accomplished nothing that could last. 

And so this long education of the gentiles had 
reached a condition the exact complement of Israel's 
state, both in their gains and their defects. On the 
one hand a ruined nation, broken, scattered, subdued, 
but strong in the hard-earned knowledge of Jehovah ; 
on the other, an empire splendid with all the greatness 
man can of himself achieve, but weak at heart and 
weary because "the world by wisdom knew not God." 

Without doubt God had presided as much over the 
one as the other ; had as truly raised up men in Greece 
and Rome to lead the gentiles towards his appointed 
ends as in Israel. And it was only when these ends 
were reached, and all was thus prepared, that the ful- 
ness of time was come. 



50 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



IV. 

CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 

INTO such a world came Jesus the Christ, who alone 
of men has perfectly combined the inherited gains 
of all mankind, the teachings of the ages, and has 
added to them what else God had to say. So that in 
him all divine utterances are summed up, things old 
and new, and he is the perfect Word of God. Not, 
indeed, that Christ was the outcome of human circum- 
stances. He of all men was least the product of his 
age, was most the producer of what followed. 

He was bred upon the ground where Jew and gen- 
tile met, and shared the characteristics of both. No 
Jew had ever so grasped the meaning of God's uni- 
versal sway. To live under this was his meat, his 
daily breath. He took no step and spoke no word of 
which the consciousness of God was not the ground 
and the strength. The age-long lesson which Israel 
had so slowly mastered was to him the first of intui- 
tions. And yet the zealous leaders of the Jews re- 
fused to know him as a Jew. They called him a 
Samaritan and a lunatic ; for he was wholly without 
the narrow spirit of the race : he corrected Moses, 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 51 

cast away the traditions, welcomed gentiles, looked for 
a following in the future far beyond the bounds of 
Israel. 

He was truly Greek in his broad and intelligent 
human sympathies. All his words aim at the essential 
humanity. The face of nature and the course of 
daily life were his text-books ; the intuitions and the 
conscience of men the points of departure from which 
he built his doctrine. And with a grandeur of thought 
truly Roman he labored to win the world. He fore- 
told what the ages have realized, — the extension of 
his influence to all lands. The boundaries of his 
thought were as much wider than Caesar's as his aims 
were nobler. 

And yet this man, who possessed and bettered all 
that was best in Jew or gentile, had learned in no 
school, whether of Athens or Jerusalem. It was as if 
he came to the world from its antique sources, speak- 
ing all the dialects of the world with a purer strain 
and a clearer utterance. What others had laboriously 
learned by generations of arduous discipline, came 
freely to him as he lived his humble life and followed 
his noble thinking among the hills of Galilee. And 
not only did all come to him which others had learned, 
but to all this he added vastly more. For God had 
not yet spoken his full meaning. The veil had 
thinned, indeed, but the view was clouded still. Now, 



52 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

the world being at last able to see, God would indeed 
reveal himself. And since for human understanding 
the truth must be expressed in terms of human expe- 
rience, there was set before the world in Jesus the 
express image of God in the fashion of a man. 

We shall have to discuss, when we come to consider 
the Christian doctrines, the momentous import of the 
fact that this was possible. It is enough to say here 
that it implies so close a relation of man to God that 
no dividing line can be drawn, nor can any contrast 
be maintained except in degree. For the present we 
have to look only at the visible characteristics of 
Jesus and his teaching, and to consider what were the 
vast additions which he made to the heritage of the 
people of God. 

The first peculiarity of Jesus is the perfection with 
which he combines in a harmonious character all 
excellences hitherto known, so that all previous great- 
ness seems one-sided and defective. The ardent Jew- 
ish theism was not more conspicuous in him than the 
marvellous intellectual subtility with which he touched 
all subjects. This, combined with pungent wit, unfail- 
ing tact, and a perfect literary sense, made his sayings 
like proverbs, open to all alike, capable of transla- 
tion into all languages, and so vital that they have 
lived across two thousand years ; while each of them 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 53 

so profoundly touches the core of truth as to express 
a final analysis. And yet the aim of all was not con- 
troversy, nor the founding of a new philosophy, nor 
the moment's applause; it was all aimed with the 
shrewdest common-sense at the daily life of the men 
around him, and evinced a practical grasp which was 
of the genuine Roman type. There had been no such 
man nor any hint of him. The qualities, indeed, had 
seemed to exclude each other ; and the mere demon- 
stration that humanity could rise so high and remain 
so truly human was enough to kindle anew the hopes 
and ambitions of the race. 

But all this was only the basis of personal character 
which brought to the people of God the final divine 
revelation. We may for the present purpose divide 
under five heads what is claimed as new in the relation 
of Christ. Not, indeed, that any of these points had 
been unsurmised ; for God had not left himself without 
witness. But much may be dimly felt after which is 
not grasped, and, the final truth once spoken, all the 
antecedents appear with new distinctness. 

/. The Fatherhood of God. The reverence for God 
which had been in the most advanced Jews the loyal 
affection of a subject, became in Jesus the love of a 
son. The Old Testament, to be sure, like all other 
religious books, speaks of God as Father ; but they 
are all thinking of him as the Author of our being. 



54 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

Jesus elevates the meaning to comprehend the solici- 
tude, patience, and ready forgiveness of paternal love. 
Nor does he merely speak of this. All his character 
and all his consciousness are penetrated with the joyful 
sense of divine communion. So that he not only pre- 
sents to us the perfect example of filial obedience, but 
he so fully inherits his Father's traits that in Christ 
the divine character comes plainly to our sight. And 
the result of this communion is that in him perfect love 
has cast out fear. There is for him no surrounding 
shadow, no beyond, whether of present or future reach, 
that can disquiet him or hinder his freedom of thought 
or action. His whole nature, too, is expanded by this 
continual touch of God, so that he seems greater than 
men and only by condescension wearing our form ; 
until deeper study fails to find any trait which is not as 
truly human as divine ; and the great truth emerges 
for the first time to men's eyes that the children of 
God are indeed partakers of His nature. 

An inseparable corollary of the divine fatherhood 
is the human brotherhood. It had remained for the 
Gospel to declare that all human beings are brethren, 
not by virtue of physical constitution or of any com- 
mon endowments, but because of an intrinsic worth 
which is derived from the divine parentage of all and 
constitutes in each the image of God. This idea once 
conceived necessarily abolished distinctions which 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 55 

had been thought essential. Henceforth there was 
" neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, 
neither bond nor free," and the entire subsequent 
course of human history shows the Gospel struggling to 
reform the institutions of human society upon this new 
basis. That the struggle has lasted so long, and suc- 
cess has come so slowly, only indicates the profound- 
ness of the new principle and the magnitude of the 
proposed changes. 

//. The Triumph of Righteousness, That righteous- 
ness ought to triumph is the first postulate of ethics, 
(if it be not an identical proposition,) and it has been 
the theme of moralists in all ages. That it will triumph 
has been the hope of the best men, and is more or less 
clearly promised in most religions. But the nature and 
the process of this triumph have lain much in obscu- 
rity. In the revelation of Christ, however, all is plain. 
Righteousness becomes, not formal compliance with 
any law, but harmony with God ; and the entire life of 
Jesus illustrates alike the negative and the positive 
side of this statement. The triumph of righteousness 
is with him no mere victory after conflict, but complete 
conversion. It is not enough to banish or hide or 
prostrate the sinner, with whatever completeness ; the 
triumph is achieved in the individual case only when 
he is no longer a sinner, and in all its fulness only 
when there is no longer any sinner. 



56 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

But it was not enough to teach this as the destined 
future. The especial emphasis is laid upon the assur- 
ance that this process is going on at every moment. 
God is working in every event of human experience 
towards this consummation. The scene about us is 
not the doubtful struggle of Zoroaster, but the skilful 
and successful working of God drawing all men to 
himself. Not only is there no place for doubt, but 
there is no retreat and no pause. " God is in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto himself" — all the world 
and all the time. 

III. Immortality. It was not reserved for Jesus to 
announce the immortality of man. Probably the se- 
cret doctrines of the Egyptians and the Greeks con- 
tained this tenet, and certainly the Pharisees made it 
very important. Nor did he make any very definite 
revelation of the conditions and occupations of the 
future life. If all that Jesus is reported to have said 
about the conditions of the future be assembled, it 
will be found to convey very little conception of 
details or of methods — hardly more, indeed, than the 
repeated assertion of life beyond death. We must 
look in quite another direction for the unmeasured 
light which he threw upon this subject. 

All previous teachers who had anything to say 
about a future life, had taken the physical nature of 
man and its processes as their conception of life, and 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 57 

had regarded the life beyond death as somehow a pro- 
longation of this or an annex to it. With this view, 
death was the inevitable antagonist and conqueror of 
life. Such life could never for a moment escape from 
the shadow of its approaching doom ; and however it 
might be promised that after that dread experience 
an awakening should come, still the immeasurable loss 
must be sustained, the treasure must be dropped from 
our hand, and the best comfort was the hope that it 
might be somewhere found again. 

Jesus conceives the matter in a wholly different 
strain. Man's life is his spiritual being, about which 
the physical is wrapped as a garment, deriving what 
is called its life from the true life within. When the 
garment is worn out or no longer serves, it falls away. 
One is not much concerned at the loss of a garment. 
The thought of finality or of ruin finds no place to 
enter. The old gone, life puts on new wrappings and 
proceeds. Jesus, therefore, is said to have " abolished 
death." His aim does not seek the future, but the 
present. He will make men so understand what life 
is, and so consciously partake of it, that the body's 
fortunes or its loss will be to them mere incidents, and 
instead of struggling to conceive how life is to be 
resumed after death, they will marvel how men could 
have imagined that the mortal stroke had anything to 
do with life. 



58 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

This explains what has often been thought a confu- 
sion of New Testament language. The same passage 
seems in one light to speak of righteousness and pres- 
ent faith, while from another point it seems to tell of 
immortality. But these things are one. The life eter- 
nal, which is the centre of all New Testament teach- 
ing, is a present state which has no transient quality 
and looks for no disaster. And all this is brought to 
us, not as concerning the far-off future, but for its 
present power. It touches the true conception of the 
blight and evil of sin; for sin opposes, and, to the ex- 
tent of its power, extinguishes the true life, leaving 
man a dwarfed and crippled being, imprisoned in his 
body. It thus poisons the stream which flows toward 
the future, making the physical life so predominant 
that every forward look terminates in the dread of 
death. " The sting of death is sin." Hence it is that 
Christ's work in saving from sin and in opening immor- 
tality are so inextricably blended in the New Testament. 

The heathen poets were accustomed to sing of the 
immortals taking human form, to lay it off again at 
pleasure. But through this disguise ran always the 
immortal consciousness, giving splendor and dignity 
to the person and revealing itself in every act : " In- 
cessu patuit dea." 

He who will look may trace all this in the person of 
Jesus ; and that approach to it which his true disciples 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 59 

have shown in every age, glorifies their days and de- 
clares them, to themselves and to all, heirs of immor- 
tality. 

IV. Philanthropy. The love of men exhibited by 
Jesus had many characteristics new to human experi- 
ence. With a true human tenderness for particular 
friends, it is still the essential humanity which he 
loves ; and this makes him equally near to men of all 
classes and kinds. Other philanthropists, resting on 
something less central and universal, have leaned to 
this or that kindred, class, or quality of men. Jesus 
alone is the universal lover. 

It grows out of the same fact that his love is pro- 
foundly wise, and seeks to confer on its objects, not 
that which will please, but that which will benefit them. 
Since it was necessary that he should bestow largess in 
unmeasured abundance, both to fix the attention of the 
careless crowd and to express the tenderness which 
would not be hidden, he healed disease ; for health is 
at once the most fundamental of physical blessings 
and the most universally valued, while it can in no 
way pauperize or debauch the receiver. In the physi- 
cal domain, therefore, his great gift of healing fully 
justified the wisdom of his love. 

But he constantly aims deeper. He warns the newly 
healed that sin is worse than sickness. Teaching and 
example alike point to the spiritual as the true seat of 



60 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

man's welfare; and from the announcement of the 
angel at Bethlehem to the acceptance of the penitent 
thief, the purpose of his life still appears, — to save 
men's souls. Nor is this a limited or contingent love. 
In his own parable the shepherd goes after the lost 
sheep " till he find it ; " and all Christ's words and 
acts furnish not one suggestion of loss or shame be- 
yond his seeking. His healing is not for the worthy- 
alone ; his pity is not for the penitent alone. Even to 
Jerusalem, that would not hear, is pointed out a far-off 
future when they shall call him blessed. The love of 
Jesus for men, immediately helpful and practical, was 
also universal, wise, and everlasting. 

V. The Meaning of Life. This teaching finds ex- 
pression far more in the conduct of Christ's life than 
in his precepts, although it is not wanting in the latter. 
He has no quarrel with the world. Keenly alive to 
all the misery and sin of man's estate, which were far 
more pronounced elements of society then than now, 
he nevertheless moves amid them with a serene spirit. 
He offers himself to men as their Teacher, their Ex- 
ample, their Saviour, but he is calm and assured in the 
face of those evils which goad so many in our time to 
fury or despair. He counsels no violent revolution, 
but is always hopeful and assuring. And the key to 
all this lies in the conception of present spiritual life 
which we have studied in connection with man's 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 6 1 

immortality. He does not conceive himself to have 
made an incursion into the physical realm, like a con- 
queror adding a new province to his kingdom. He 
recognizes that human life is one, however it may be 
composed of contrasting elements ; and in proclaiming 
the supremacy of the spirit he does but set in their 
true relations those elements which had misadapted 
themselves and made confusion. Whatever is human, 
or has to do with man's existence, has in his view its 
place and work; and the spiritual is not only ultimately 
to rule the natural, but it is to reach that position by 
means of those very teachings which the natural con- 
veys to it. 

This thought of Christ as it stands in the Gospels is 
far more consonant with the mind of our day than with 
that of any intervening age. For the slight compari- 
sons of his work to a warfare have caught the attention 
of warlike ages, and quite eclipsed in the teachings of 
the Church those copious comparisons which Jesus 
made of his work to the process of growth. At last, 
however, we have passed the ages of war, and our time 
is far more truly represented by the school than the 
camp. The pen is not only mightier than the sword, 
but more esteemed. Therefore, the mind of Christen- 
dom goes back to the thought of Christ, and easily 
understands him when he likens the relations of life's 
elements to those of the soil and the seed. In such a 



62 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

view the dualism which has haunted the thinking of 
men from Zoroaster to our day, setting good against 
evil, and flesh against spirit, as the antagonists in a 
doubtful struggle, is quite swept away. Man is a 
spirit, and by the Father of spirits he is placed 
among earthly conditions as the seed is placed in the 
soil. Whatever touches him at any point has food or 
quickening for his spiritual life, and the aggregate of 
existing circumstances is God's choice of means for 
bringing man to Himself. The birds of the air and 
the harvests of the field, Caesar's penny and the house- 
wife's broom, are messengers of God, and come to 
man with no other purpose and no other result than 
to foster in its growth the image of God within him. 

This is no condemnation of the physical life ; on 
the contrary, all experience proves that just so far as 
the material part of man is dominated by the spiritual, 
the former becomes more beautiful, strong, and satisfy- 
ing : so that Christ's understanding of life is the reverse 
of the ascetic, and by the mutual ennobling of body 
and spirit a harmonious development of the whole man 
and all his life is effected, in which no part is base, 
while that which is divine and deathless bears its fitting 
sway. 

While Jesus lived he seemed to concentrate in him- 
self all that was divine among men. But as soon as 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 63 

he had disappeared the history of the people of God 
resumed its course. And yet so profound had been 
the impression of his personality, so supreme his 
grasp of what was permanent in the world's previous 
attainments, and so immeasurable the additions which 
he made, that the figure was none too bold when the 
apostle called him the second Adam. With him the 
human race began anew. The men of the first ages 
felt this keenly, and gave him all their heart and mind. 
But in our day, looking back across all the Christian 
history, we can far more clearly see the force of the 
comparison. For while his revisions of, and his addi- 
tions to, former things came upon the world as the 
visible beginning of a new era, we can now see how 
truly they were represented by those parables which 
tell of the leaven or the seed. God's gift to the world 
in Christ was germinal. The experience of every age 
has given new impulse to its development, and the ever- 
recurring crises of weakness or need in the Church 
have still found some new and adequate supply evolved 
from the continuing work of Christ among men — 
something never before experienced because never 
before needed. 

No man can thoughtfully study the history of the 
gospel without discovering before his eyes a great 
spiritual organism, instinct with life and growth. And 
none can search for the causes of renewal, as the 



64 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

Church has again and again experienced it, without 
seeing that in every case a return to Christ was the 
source of better things. It is, therefore, to no dead 
or absent Lord that the Christian looks back. He is 
authorized to take in very literalness the parting words 
of Jesus, " Because I live ye shall live also ; " believ- 
ing that the visible fortunes of men are with each gen- 
eration more and more potently governed through the 
power of the spirit by that second Adam, who is 
to-day, as he was in Judea, "both Christ and Lord." 

We must now resume our survey of the history of 
God's people. And presently followed a strange phe- 
nomenon. The treasure which the chosen people had 
slowly accumulated, and which had been completed by 
Jesus, being enucleated from its husks of Jewish race 
and ritual, was forthwith more precious to gentile than 
to Jew. It formed instant alliance with the best re- 
sults of Grecian culture and Roman energy, and, 
spreading beyond all limit of land or race, constituted 
and marked off the new people of God for all the 
future. 

Of course the process presently began by which 
elaborate systems of visible order and of philosophic 
thought usurp the distinction of spiritual life. But 
amid whatever vagaries, ecclesiastical or theological, 
the first centuries demonstrated what all since have 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 65 

proved, that the spirit of God ceases not to work 
among men, and the people of God are of every 
kindred, nation, and family of the earth. It was in- 
evitable that the Roman spirit of authority and estab- 
lished order which had so wonderfully shaped the 
political world should assert itself in the Church ; and 
this, in fact, became the conspicuous feature of Chris- 
tendom till the German invasions had produced their 
fruit. Into every relation of life, political, social, do- 
mestic, and equally into the religious, these breezes 
from the north brought the vigor of self-reliance and 
personal assertion. The struggle with authority was 
long and fluctuating, but gradually there returned 
something of the ancient Greek sense of individual 
importance and liberty, and the renaissance broadened 
into the light of the modern world. 

Of the varying fortunes of the Church through this 
long struggle nothing need here be said; but to the 
people of God, scattered through all lands and 
churches, the new light of modern individualism has 
brought only help and an Open way. The vast multi- 
plication of sects and creeds has enabled quiet souls 
to find the blessings of association and mutual help 
with the least compromise of their intellectual tenden- 
cies. To be sure, strife and bitterness have vexed 
those to whom religion means form and creed ; but 
side by side with all this has steadily grown, with the 



66 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

broadening of modern thought, the disposition to em- 
phasize less the wrappings and media, more the inner 
life. And now in our own day, the Gospel having 
been carried by missions to men of other races and 
other faiths, the inadequacy of much that had seemed 
sufficient to Western minds is sharply demonstrated. 
The word comes back from the East that subtile dis- 
tinctions and cruel dogmas and cumbrous forms must 
be stripped away if minds so unlike ours are to re- 
ceive the Gospel ; and that when these are stripped 
off, the essential revelation of Christ exhibits all its 
ancient power to reach and win the hearts and lives of 
every race. 

Such, then, in mere outline has been the history of 
the people of God. Their career is closely analogous 
to that evolution of revelation which we have seen to 
run through the Bible ; as, indeed, for reasons already 
suggested, must be the case. Beginning with a single 
race definitely and strongly announced as chosen by 
God, the history runs on with constant misapprehen- 
sion of their calling and constant divine discipline, 
under which a succession of clear-sighted men receive 
and transmit what their associates only vaguely under- 
stand, — a people within a people. This stream of 
ancient impulse runs broadening through the history 
of mankind, receiving successive affluents from Gre- 



CHRIST AND THE CHRISTIANS. 67 

cian, Roman, German, and Oriental sources, and de- 
veloping its latent power and excellence into ever 
greater activity. The growing and spreading people 
of God, sometimes hidden from sight amid earthly- 
wrappings, sometimes stripped to plain view for its 
mighty struggles, becomes from generation to genera- 
tion more numerous, stronger, and more consciously 
possessed of its imperishable divine treasure, — the 
salt of the earth, the leaven which is to work till all 
the lump is leavened. 



68 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



V. 

TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE. 

WE have now to return to the study of the teach- 
ings of the Bible, aided to find their real 
meaning by constant reference to the experience of 
this chosen people, who have produced them, pre- 
served them, and by them are to grow till they fill 
the earth. 

The Bible everywhere addresses itself to the current 
life of men. There are indeed parts, as some of the 
prophets and the Revelation, which seem mystical and 
remote from familiar things ; but it is always found 
that this character belongs to the manner of expression 
and the illustrative imagery used, while the subject- 
r matter of the writer's thought is still some part of 
current life. 

The range of the Bible in time is so vast that all 
forms of social order are touched, from the half-savage 
nomads of the Arabian desert to the inhabitants of 
voluptuous Corinth. And every social grade and all 
degrees of personal excellence find their place. It is 



TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE. 69 

with the whole of life, too, that the Bible deals. All 
the elements of human existence are portrayed with 
sublime impartiality : success and pleasure have their 
full attention ; sorrow, defeat, the bitterness of death, 
are in no wise overlooked ; the highest virtue and the 
foulest sin, shame, injustice, cruelty, whatever is found 
part of human experience as man's history rolls on 
— all are set forth and handled in the Bible as com- 
ponent parts of its subject-matter. It has been diffi- 
cult to teach men this view. At various stages of 
their history the people of God have tried to set apart 
some section of human life as particularly the object 
of divine regard and the field of religion. 

It was natural that the Jews should find in the 
peculiar order of life prescribed by their law a readier 
approach to virtue and a closer intercourse with God. 
But so far were they from being right, that a large part 
of the work attempted by reformers and prophets was 
to break the bonds of formalism and lift the hearts of 
the people to heights which the Law could not reach. 
And Israel only prospered as the spirit was stronger 
than the letter. The ascetics and recluses of the early 
and the mediaeval Church aimed at the same thing, 
seeking an ordering of human life which should omit 
its undesirable elements. But the result was disastrous 
both to the personal character of the votaries and to 
the social state of the world around them. Indeed, 



70 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

the great condemnation of all such attempts has been 
that to the extent of their influence they arrest that 
social development through which alone the world 
improves. In every case the inevitable reaction which 
summoned all men back to the whole of life, gave new 
impulse to this development and set the race forward. 
And all this is equally true of that conception of re- 
ligious living common among modern sects, which 
constructs from certain elements of daily life an or- 
der of living for the godly which is distinguishable at 
sight. 

A candid reading of the Bible finds nothing of this. 
It is life, and the whole of life, which forms the field 
of its activity. Every experience of every man has 
some relation to the things of God. Every detail of 
human history holds a place in the divine plan. All 
the utterances of God to men are delivered in terms 
of familiar things ; and if any of the things of God 
beyond man's reach, whether past or future, are sug- 
gested, they are only so far unfolded as man may un- 
derstand them by some connection with the things he 
knows. It follows that in the view which the Bible 
teaches, the world as men find it offers the possibilities 
and the means for the highest attainments in virtue, 
usefulness, and happiness ; and if in any crisis the 
means for these seem wanting, they are to be sought, 
not by escape from the life that now is, but by discov- 



TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE. 71 

ering within its range some neglected opportunity or 
help. Now, this very thing, to bring to light the ne- 
glected resources which God has made ready for men, 
is the scope and object of the Bible. And the key to 
the whole process is the knowledge of God. 



72 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



VI. 

THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

THE writers of the Bible do not attempt to prove 
the existence of God, nor to define his nature, 
nor to catalogue his attributes. They display in them- 
selves and assume in the reader a previous experience 
of life which has established the conviction of an 
over-ruling Intelligence and a desire to deal with him. 
And to this conviction and desire they address them- 
selves. 

The conception is frankly anthropomorphic ; run- 
ning through all degrees as the revelation develops, 
from the savagery of the wilderness, where Jehovah 
is a rival of the Egyptian calf, to the " Father " of 
Jesus. Since none by searching can find out God, and 
since man is made in his image, it seems to the writers 
of the Bible, as it has seemed to devout men of all 
ages, that our one hope of apprehending God is to 
study him in his likeness. And this ancient habit of 
the human mind finds its full sanction in the fact that 
when God consummated the revelation of himself he 
was displayed in the perfect manhood of Jesus. The 
Grecian mind was far too subtile to be content with 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 73 

this simple faith of the Hebrews. As soon as the 
Gospel in its earliest diffusion had impressed itself 
upon the gentiles, their philosophers began to elab- 
orate a divine ontology. The thinkers of the Church 
have toiled at the same task to this day ; and ecclesi- 
astical authorities of almost every name have made 
their own views of the being of God a principal part 
of the required faith necessary whether for present 
fellowship or for eternal salvation. But it is to be 
noted that the advancing scholarship of our day finds 
less and less authority in the Bible for these positive 
dogmas ; and that the history of Christendom shows 
no constant relation between any theories of the God- 
head and that sweet, Christlike spirit which alone is 
evidence of harmony with God. 

Indeed, in all the sad history of ecclesiasticism 
there has been no cause so fruitful as these theories, 
of envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. And there 
is no surer mark of the true progress of our age than 
the fact that, by virtue of experience rather than of 
argument, the Church is growing less insistent of 
these views, and rests more and more in the knowl- 
edge of God as displayed in the Man of Nazareth. 

The fundamental thought of the Bible when God is 
named is power. He is declared almighty, not so 
much by the frequent repetition of the word as by the 



74 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

habitual reference of every thing or event to him as 
its cause. And this is true alike of material and of 
spiritual things, of small and great. He suffers the 
sparrow to fall ; he holds the stars in their courses ; he 
hardens Pharaoh's heart; he is the Saviour of the 
world. And this divine power is conceived according 
to the consciousness of power which men have in 
themselves. At first it is enough for a rude age that 
God controls with physical compulsion the course of 
material things ; but so soon as some insight is devel- 
oped the power of God is perceived to lie, like the 
true power of man, in dominating will : He speaks 
and it is done ; he commands and it stands fast. Nor 
has any advance of human thought been able to better 
this Hebrew conception. More and more the prog- 
ress of knowledge shows all the power of man, physi- 
cal as well as moral, to be the exercise of will ; and 
more and more the advance of natural science finds 
all force pointing back to some great centre, from 
which it comes forth intelligent and harmonized to 
conduct an ordered world. 

And here the biblical doctrine rests. What may be 
the connecting processes between the divine will and 
the effect, no writer of the Bible cares to discuss. But 
of course the ingenuity of Christian thinkers has not 
been content with this, and has busied itself with sec- 
ond causes. The most important outcome of these 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 75 

speculations concerns the human will in its relations 
to the will of God, and the course of nature as dis- 
covered by physical science. The former theme will 
be better treated when we come to study the nature of 
man. The latter has its place here. 

For the history of Christendom presents a long 
series of attempts on the part of ecclesiastics to limit 
the researches and suppress the results of physical 
science, as being contrary to revealed truth. The 
effort has always proceeded on the assumption that 
there is a Biblical doctrine of the methods by which 
God works his will. Whereas the opposite is true. As 
if to leave room for human discovery, the divine censor- 
ship would seem to have excluded all mention of that 
which may lie between God's command and the event. 
" He maketh his sun to rise," but whether after the 
theory of Ptolemy or Galileo concerns not Jesus. 

This tendency to add to revelation has plagued every 
age of the Church, and still survives. But in every 
attempt to limit the establishment of natural truth the 
Church has suffered defeat, from Roger Bacon to 
Darwin. And to-day, as always, the soul truly in har- 
mony with God finds the Biblical conception enough 
for religious faith : the divine will gives the initial im- 
pulse ; and through all the processes of nature, be they 
few or many, that power works unspent till the result 
appears. 



76 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

The Biblical view, however, is full and clear upon 
one point which students of the physical world are apt 
to contest. Omnipotence is meant for no figurative 
or approximate term. Any intrinsic power of second 
causes, by which a process of nature once set going 
could for an instant propagate itself if the divine atten- 
tion were withdrawn, is absolutely excluded. What- 
ever the means or processes, they are but channels 
which divine volition makes for itself. And this con- 
ception begins now to be suggested by the latest 
studies of science. Working only in her own domain, 
and not yet sure of her discovery, she is guided by 
many converging indications to postulate beyond all 
phenomena one source of power, the Cause of causes. 
Through this detour of so many generations she 
catches at last a surmise of the view so plain to the 
ancient mind : " Of him and through him and to him 
are all things." 

Inseparably allied with the Biblical conception of 
divine power is that of wisdom. There is no exercise 
of omnipotence but has its purpose and its method. 
And the range of thought covered by " the wisdom of 
God " is very wide. Not only does it include knowl- 
edge and judgment, but contrivance, foresight, persist- 
ency, every intellectual process by which power may 
better reach its aims. Indeed, these faculties are con- 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 77 

ceived as developed so far beyond their possibilities in 
man, that they become themselves expressions of the 
divine omnipotence, and the ideas of power and wis- 
dom are inextricably blended. 

Both Jews and Christians have been much accus- 
tomed to think of the omnipotent wisdom as acting in 
a sporadic and makeshift way, devising new expedients 
for new difficulties. But while the older writers of 
the Bible have something of this, even they correct 
themselves by a broader view, which comes afterwards 
to dominate and then to exclude the other. However 
vivid may be the writer's sense of help wisely fitted to a 
present need, he is always conscious that this is part of 
a divine scheme having extension into the past and the 
future, and as broad as his own horizon may happen to 
be, — a family, the Jewish nation, the world of Western 
Asia, the race of man. The New Testament writers, 
taught by Jesus, have cast away all limitation, and are 
consciously participating in the eternal purpose with 
which God made the world and to which he holds the 
world's progression, the final holiness of all mankind. 
This is for Jesus, and all who have learned of him, the 
starting-point and cause, the method, the goal of all 
that God's almighty wisdom has planned touching 
man. 

This conception of divine purpose, whether widely 
or narrowly understood, of course implies a divine 



78 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

superintendence of every moment and every act in 
human life. The divine hand is never for an instant 
withdrawn, and escape from it is impossible. " Thou 
hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand 
upon me." And the experience day by day of this 
power not ourselves, which mingles with all our activity 
and helps or hinders all our plans, supersedes far the 
biblical writers and far excels any formal attempt to 
prove the existence of God. 

How this conception escapes the paralysis of fatal- 
ism we shall see when we study the will of man. It is 
enough here to say that in the thought of the Bible it 
makes no approach to fatalism, and indeed is quite 
the opposite ; all the biblical writers implying in one 
way or another something of that meaning which Paul 
puts into his daring paradox : " Work out your own 
salvation. . . . for it is God that worketh in you both 
to will and to do." Fatalism is excluded, too, by the 
incessant strain pervading the entire volume, which 
insists upon the moral government of God. For no 
moral government is possible over those who have no 
freedom of will. And this brings us to the scriptural 
view of the justice of God. 

Justice has many phases of meaning, all easily re- 
ducible to two, — character and function. And when 
functional justice is fully analyzed, it ultimately rests 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 79 

on character, whether of the legislator, the judge, or 
the executive. Therefore the root of all justice lies 
in character ; and while the scriptural writers do not 
philosophize about the matter, they have at heart pre- 
cisely this conception when they speak of the justice 
of God. He is just intrinsically and before we come 
to consider his administration : " Justice and judgment 
are the habitation of his throne." And there is special 
anxiety to make it plain that all his government of men 
is based on this intrinsic justice of character. All 
human experience shows that high station and great 
power too often lead men to disregard the rights of 
the weak and the humble. But every biblical writer 
insists that He whose station and power admit no 
comparison, is sedulous to vindicate the poor and 
needy, solicitous, as the just always are, that His own 
superiority shall not harm the feeblest. 

Out of such justice proceeds the entire system of 
moral government under which the Bible represents 
men as living. And if we regard the ultimate motive 
from which all the divine treatment of man proceeds, 
namely, that man may attain harmony with God, it 
appears that the whole aim of this government is to 
cultivate in man that justice of character which is of 
the divine essence. 

The speculations of theologians have too often fol- 
lowed a different clew. Filled with the thought of the 



80 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

divine majesty, taught by the jealousy with which 
human kings assert their dignity, they have imagined 
the purpose of God in governing men to lie in some 
display of his own greatness, and the first demand of 
his justice to be servile submission to arbitrary com- 
mands. Whatever color of warrant for this is found 
in the Bible, consists merely of illustrative imagery 
borrowed from the habits of the writer's time, while 
beneath is always suggested the even-handed justice 
which the Deity as rigorously performs as exacts. 
God takes no offence when one of his earliest servants 
puts to him the challenge, " Shall not the Judge of all 
the earth do right ? " 

It is amply proved that servile submission by no 
means trains men in the virtue of intrinsic justice ; 
and the whole scene is ennobled when we find a 
prophet who had prostrated himself before the divine 
majesty, bidden, " Stand on thy feet, son of man, and 
I will speak with thee." All conceptions of the divine 
government, therefore, which propose any other end 
for it than to make men just, are alike unreasonable 
and unscriptural. And there is hardly another fact in 
the progress of the people of God which more strikingly 
shows how necessary human experience is as the inter- 
preter of divine revelation, than the broadening appre- 
hension of God's government as intrinsically just, 
which has accompanied increasing justice in the so- 
cial institutions of men. 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 81 

The first requirement of administrative justice is a 
j law, itself intrinsically just and rigorously observed by 
judge and executive. Under the divine government 
this law is made known to man through three channels, 
but the law is one. We have to study this single law 
and to observe its perfect identity, in the experience of 
man, in the conscience, and in the Bible. 

It cannot be said that the physical world, the seat 
of man's most obvious experience, either has a moral 
character, or imposes on man a moral law ; but it cer- 
tainly impresses on the mind two things which prepare 
the way for moral government. These two things are 
a right conception of the nature of law, and a demon- 
stration that a reign of law is beneficial to the gov- 
erned. Physical law is found to be inexorable. It 
has no favorites, and takes no bribes. All life must 
adjust itself to this law or perish ; and the idea of 
trifling with it or evading it grows weaker with every 
advance of knowledge. But more : since there are 
many laws of nature, and all inexorable, it follows that 
all must be combined in a certain harmony for certain 
ends ; and so the conception of law loses its arbitrary 
character in proportion as it becomes more inflexible. 
Out of this grows the impression of beneficence ; for 
the general outcome of nature's processes being abun- 
dance and success, and all being achieved under this 
complex of harmonizing laws which are inflexible, it is 



82 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

obvious that the resulting success is conditioned upon 
the inviolability of each law, so that any occasional 
relaxation of the law would produce a corresponding 
failure of result. 

When we turn to the course of human events, a 
moral law at once appears. Moralists of all ages and 
every grade of culture have agreed that the life of 
man is under certain obligations, to obey which brings 
the best results of living, while to disregard them 
makes life a failure. Doubtless when the moral laws 
thus ascertained are formulated, they will appear of 
the most rudimentary character ; but they have never- 
theless the true moral quality, and are by no means 
mere counsels of prudence. 

The second channel of moral law is the conscience. 
Conscience is not a simple faculty of the mind, but 
consists of the combined activity of the judgment and 
the moral sense. The judgment when acting in con- 
science is not different from its usual state. It surveys 
the facts present to the mind, and determines their 
several characters and their relations. The moral sense 
is a primary faculty, and as such cannot be resolved 
into any simpler terms. We know it only because we 
are conscious of its action within us. Its function is 
to select from among all the volitions or preferences 
known to be possible at a given time, certain ones 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 83 

which it approves ; and in the case of volitions it im- 
peratively commands these to be made. Its word is 
" ought," and its unique characteristic is its imperative- 
ness. We are conscious that this differs from all other 
motives which affect the will. No calculation of ad- 
vantage, no force of habit, no expectation of pleas- 
ure, however surely they may sway our determinations, 
are ever felt to lay upon us such an imperative as does 
the moral sense. Nor is this felt as an outward force. 
It is not aroused, nor even simulated, by any urgency 
of external compulsion. The mandate of the moral 
sense is felt to arise from some quality of our sur- 
roundings, indeed, but only because something which 
is in us and of us makes these surroundings the 
occasion of its imperative command. 

Now, it must be clearly understood how these two 
factors, the judgment and the moral sense, work to- 
gether as conscience. Alone, neither of them suffices. 
It is notorious that men may formulate the most exact 
theories of moral relations, while they show by their 
conduct that nothing within compels them to live by 
these theories. And, on the other hand, the moral 
sense, acting without judgment, has filled human his- 
tory with a sad and terrible record of fanaticism 
and superstition. The latter can no more be called 
conscience than the former. 

The function of conscience is truly performed then, 



84 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

and then only, when, the judgment having carefully 
weighed the group of things or possibilities in question, 
having determined their characters and relations and 
set them plainly before the mind, the moral sense 
seizes upon certain of these presentations and issues 
its command. If it be objected that this supposes a 
slow deliberation, while it is notorious that the best 
dictates of conscience are often rendered instantly 
upon some contingency, it may be answered that these 
instantaneous decisions rest upon some habitual and 
familiar determination of the judgment, which the mind 
instantly sees to be applicable to the new case ; and it 
is of the nature of the moral sense to pronounce at 
sight unless the judgment calls for delay. Conscience, 
then, as an expression of moral law, can only be the 
consenting action of judgment and the moral sense, 
the latter enforcing as imperative what the former has 
decided to be just. 

But this double process has no power to originate 
law. The decision rests upon the data of experience, 
whether one's own or another's ; and it is only in 
proportion as experience has exercised and educated 
it that conscience pronounces with clearness and ac- 
curacy. Whatever, therefore, the conscience decides 
to be law, must be already given in the facts of ex- 
perience. For this reason the Author of our experi- 
ence is the Fountain of all moral law, — the \aw-givcr; 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 85 

while the conscience is the capacity in man to which 
God addresses himself, — the \&vf-receiver. We must 
next study the action of this receptive faculty. 

The action of the individual conscience on a unique 
case is notoriously uncertain. But every man's expe- 
rience offers innumerable repetitions of similar cases, 
so that certain canons of moral decision become es- 
tablished in each person. Still, the best results of an 
isolated experience are necessarily poor until they are 
collated with analogous decisions of others. So simi- 
lar, however, are the experiences of men, that there 
grows up a public sentiment in each group of persons, 
which holds to general rules in all important moral 
judgments. These groups, however, are warped and 
narrowed by their peculiar circumstances, and their 
decisions receive correction as they come to be com- 
pared with those of other groups. Further compari- 
sons grow out of the succession of generations, so 
that mankind has come at last to possess moral stan- 
dards generalized from the broadest possible data ; 
and all these data have been constituent parts of ac- 
tual human life. Whatever authoritative moral qual- 
ity, therefore, is in the final conclusions, must have 
inhered in that course of things which constitutes the 
experience of man. 

Of course such results can consist only of the most 



86 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

elementary principles, but they are such as lie at the 
bottom of all experience. Of course, too, the indi- 
vidual conscience continues to make its own applica- 
tions of the accepted laws, and even practically to 
annul them under the pressure of preconception or 
interest. Still, it remains true that a basis of morals 
can be formulated which all men profess to respect, 
and which grows in authority with the progress of the 
race. 

This basis may be outlined under three heads, 
— congenital obligations, ownership, and veracity. 
a. Men are born to certain rights and duties. The 
child owes reverence to the parent and a personal 
preference to brothers and sisters ; while he has a 
correlative claim upon the parents for support and 
care. Men also owe loyalty to the human group into 
which they are born ; but it cannot be said that a duty 
of protection to the citizen correlative to his duty of 
patriotism is universally recognized, b. All moralists 
insist upon the obligation of snum cuique. While the 
ideas of lawful acquisition are infinitely varied, there 
is no dispute that a man must be allowed to keep 
what he is recognized as having lawfully acquired. 
Life, of course, is included as his chief possession. 
c. The duty of veracity looks back and forward. 
However men may disobey the law, they universally 
recognize that falsehood, the misrepresentation of ex- 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 87 

isting things, is presumptively base, and needs strong 
reasons to justify it. And the sentiment is still more 
pronounced against that want of veracity which fails 
to make good what one has promised. The obliga- 
tion of all contracts, pledges, trusts, and of all rela- 
tions voluntarily assumed, falls under this head. 

To this threefold basis of moral law must be added 
the obligation of requital as the sanction of all. 
Together with the first conception of moral obligation 
invariably comes a conviction that he who obeys 
should and will fare well, while he who disobeys 
should and will suffer; and it is noticeable that in 
the earliest stages the certainty of requital is even 
more fixedly believed than its justice. This can 
hardly be considered anything else than an intuition 
of the moral sense re-enforced by experience of those 
inexorable sanctions which wait upon the laws of 
nature. But whatever its origin, the important fact 
is that these fundamental moral laws are never de- 
duced as speculative rules which it may be well for 
men to follow, but as imperative conditions of conduct 
which we disregard at our peril. 

Far as all this falls short of a full moral code, it 
forms a wide and solid basis of morals, and is the 
hard-won result of numberless acts of conscience, com- 
pared and mutually corrected and combined through 
millenniums of human experience. It is often claimed 



88 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

that these laws are deductions from utility; and cer- 
tainly they indicate the course of life which brings the 
greatest benefit to men. But no record exists of any 
people, however early or rude, who did not urge what- 
ever they knew of these laws primarily under the 
sanction of the moral sense, and only secondarily as 
useful. And the fact that that which satisfies the 
moral sense in the conduct of life is also the best road 
to success, is evidence that the world has a moral con- 
stitution ; that it is so constructed and administered as 
to impress upon man his obligations to the law of 
righteousness ; and that it therefore proclaims in all 
its history the sovereignty of a just God. 

The energy and authority of conscience differ most 
widely in different men, both from various degrees of 
natural endowment and from the development which 
comes of use. And when it happens that a man un- 
usually gifted with clearness and force of conscience 
lives among circumstances peculiarly fitted to develop 
these gifts, he gains the authority of an expert on 
moral questions, and may become an accepted law- 
giver. This is furthered by the fact that, as in all 
fields, so peculiarly in the field of morals, men who 
cannot themselves formulate judgments which wholly 
satisfy themselves, yet feel qualified to accept or reject 
the judgments pronounced by others, and may thus 
submit to a moral code far higher than any they 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 89 

could have framed. These reflections bring us to 
the origin and the sanction of the moral code of the 
Bible. 

Among the people of God there have arisen a series 
of men whose endowments qualified them, and whose 
surroundings impelled them, to formulate and publish 
moral judgments of the gravest character, which so 
satisfied the aggregate consciences of their contempo- 
raries as to be received for law and transmitted to the 
next generation, with all the sanction of accepted 
authority. When in another age other men of equal 
eminence arose, who accepted the current laws as 
valid, and based their own decisions upon them, new 
force and wider extension were given to what had been 
already approved ; and in this manner a body of law 
grew up, professing the sanction of divine authority 
and received upon this footing by the nation. This 
divine sanction we must understand to have been first 
claimed by the promulgators of the law as the expres- 
sion of their absolute confidence in their own ethical 
decisions, and to have been confirmed by the strong 
assurance with which the people accepted and per- 
petuated those decisions. And if we confine ourselves 
to the visible experience of Israel, this is all the 
account that can be given of the origin and sanction 
of the moral law. 

But, when we come to study this law historically, we 



90 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

do not find it a fluctuating series of ordinances ; but 
amid much that was ephemeral, we find a body of 
jurisprudence whose foundations were laid in the 
earliest enactments, and which was built into an 
orderly structure by many generations of moralists. 
It was at no point necessary to annul any fundamental 
principle, and the last result is visibly implied in the 
original germ. So strikingly is this true, that the best 
developed conscience of mankind at the present day 
finds itself perfectly in harmony with the canon of 
morals announced in the earliest pages of the Bible. 
It is evident, therefore, that some co-ordinating Intelli- 
gence must have run through all the ages, and have 
guided the evolution from its germ, producing through 
special men, acting under special conditions, the suc- 
cessive parts of which the whole was formed. This 
action of the divine wisdom is inspiration. It is to be 
conceived as parallel with the divine control, by which 
the total course of events is ordered. That God, the 
supreme Intelligence, might bring the intelligence of 
men into touch with himself upon this field, he pro- 
duced special men, fitted by the very constitution of 
their minds for the exceptional perception of moral 
law, and subjected them to such circumstances as must 
both exercise their conscience and impel them to utter 
their decisions. How these divinely appointed decis- 
ions were recognized among, and selected from, the 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. . 91 

innumerable less important dicta of other men, has 
already been pointed out. 

Now, the divine law of morals thus revealed coin- 
cides with the best deductions of men who knew not 
the Bible, so far as the gentile law extends ; but the 
revealed law carries us vastly farther. Let us note 
both these phases of the comparison. 

The three groups of moral laws which have been 
named as growing out of the common experiences of 
mankind, cover all the outward performances made 
obligatory by our social relations. They are found in 
all gentile codes of morals, and no less in the biblical ; 
and while much of a higher quality is added to them 
by the latter, yet so closely does the Bible hold to life, 
that nothing is allowed to lessen the force of these 
fundamental laws. 

To these, two other laws, not universally recognized, 
are added £>y the more advanced ethnic codes, — wor- 
ship and self-restraint. Worship, it is true, is an 
almost universal habit, but in far the greater number 
of cases it is rather prudential than moral. Yet at a 
certain elevation of mind man seems almost inevitably 
to recognize his obligations to some higher power, and 
to feel the duty of expressing them as urgently as he 
feels his social duties. With the obligations of self- 
restraint (chastity, temperance, forbearance, etc.), a 



92 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

new element enters. For these duties are not con- 
ceived as things which another has a right to demand 
of us, but as required by a certain abstract fitness, so 
that it derogates from our moral dignity to neglect 
them. 

As to the duties of worship and self-restraint, the 
Bible equals the most advanced ethnic codes ; indeed, 
it in most particulars excels them. But it goes far 
beyond all others in applying the sense of moral dig- 
nity as a motive to all acts of duty, insisting that out- 
ward performance, however perfect, has only utilitarian 
value unless it is the expression of a desire for moral 
excellence. And this conception, thrown back upon 
the most rudimentary obligations, lifts them into a true 
moral atmosphere and ennobles life. Of course this 
conception is gradually evolved in the Bible ; and it 
cannot be said that the utilitarian view of virtue is 
wholly subordinated to that of a vital spiritual neces- 
sity, until the New Testament is reached. And this 
progression of thought, as we have seen, is of the 
essence of biblical teaching. 

But a higher degree remains. Duties separately 
willed to be done stand each by itself, or at most 
grow into a habit of the will, against which there may 
rage an ever-renewed struggle within ; so that the per- 
formance of duty is a running fight, the outcome of 
which may at any moment be disastrous. Now, of all 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 93 

moral systems, that of the Bible alone rises above 
this; here alone is righteousness coupled with peace 
and joy. And this highest conception is reached by 
the final resolution of all law and motive into love. 
Love to God and to man being attained, all morality 
flows out of it as its necessary expression. This 
could not be the case if moral law were arbitrary ; but 
the whole order of things out of which the law grows 
being ordained by God in pursuit of his eternal purpose 
to harmonize man with himself, the soul which has 
attained to universal love and is thus near to God, 
wills spontaneously the things which he wills, and ful- 
fils the law just as God ordained the law, — from 
an inward vital necessity. Only the Bible reaches this 
height. 

It is through the unrelaxing administration of such 
a law that the justice of God works upon men to 
bring them into harmony with himself. The methods 
and immediate results of this administration can be 
understood only after we have considered, in their 
proper place, the relations of man to God. 

There remains one other element of the biblical con- 
ception of God, — his goodness. 

All parts of the Bible celebrate the goodness of 
God, by which they mean his willingness to bestow 
benefits. The contents of this conception of course 



94 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

vary with each writer's understanding of benefits and 
of the number whom God favors. But whether it be 
by giving the things men wish, or by promoting their 
highest welfare, whether to a chosen family or to the 
entire race, the view is clearly held that God loves to 
bestow benefits far beyond the deserts of men. No 
doctrine of revelation is more clearly expressed than 
this from the very first ; and it may be said, (allowing 
for the limitations which grow out of narrow minds,) 
that no doctrine has taken such hold of the people of 
God from the beginning to this day. Every Christian 
system which has logically involved a denial of the 
divine goodness, has embodied some device, however 
illogical, by which this undying belief might assert 
itself. It is not strange, therefore, that the new re- 
searches into the meaning of Scripture which the en- 
lightenment of our time is conducting, are making it 
more and more clear that the one fundamental thought 
on which the whole Bible is built is that God 
purposes unlimited blessing to all men. His power 
and wisdom come to our knowledge only as engaged 
in furthering this purpose, and his justice is displayed 
to us as that quality which will not permit us to work 
our own ruin. 

But all this carries with it an official tone ; and to 
our deepest sentiment it seems to need for its perfec- 
tion something more, which, happily, runs with in- 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 95 

creasing clearness through the successive Scriptures, 
till it culminates in Jesus. This is the personal sym- 
pathy of God with each man. Besides the priceless 
blessings of an ordered world and a wise discipline, 
there is given to every soul the tender intimacy of 
divine affection, which is expressed in the revelation 
of the divine fatherhood. This, indeed, is the su- 
preme revelation. The world does not teach it ; no 
searching of human wisdom has attained to it. The 
Bible alone teaches man that be he who he may, if 
he eliminate the universe from his thought and draw 
near to God in his naked personality, he will find 
himself known and loved — nay, will find that the 
divine love has chosen him from the first and pursued 
him in all his wanderings. 

It is hardly correct, therefore, to speak of the divine 
goodness as an element of the biblical conception of 
God. It is the essence of that conception, to which 
power, wisdom, and justice are attributes. "God is 
love." So that this final consideration sums up and 
blends into one all that has been said of the character 
of God as presented in the Bible. 



96 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



VII. 

THE NATURE OF MAN. 

WE turn now to the biblical presentation of man. 
It is very far from that of a scholastic recluse, 
and grows out of the close relation of the Bible to 
daily life. Man is presented as busy with common 
interests. He and the world are made for each other, 
and physical things and the course of events suit him 
and further his interests if he wisely uses them. It is 
good for him to be here, and long life is a blessing. 
The ways of wisdom, by which the right conduct of 
life is meant, are ways of pleasantness and peace. It 
is the result of this view, and not of any theorizing, 
that man is represented as the head of the creation, 
the ruler of the world. "Thou hast put all things 
under his feet." This thought is not incidental, but 
lies at the foundation. The very earliest mention of 
man announces him as made in the image of God. 

The exact conception which belongs to this phrase 
in that early time may not be easily reproduced, but 
it can hardly mean any visible resemblance, because 
the same book contains the most strenuous injunc- 
tions against attributing form to God. Probably the 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 97 

meaning was originally vague. The men of that day 
had observed that man rules the world by other than 
physical powers ; that he produces results by the 
exercise of forces of which each is conscious within 
himself, but which are outwardly discernible only 
through remote effects. To the believer in an in- 
visible God, this observation couples man with God 
at man's highest point, makes the divine alliance far 
more important than the connection of his physical 
being with the material world. God and man, there- 
fore, constitute a class far removed from all other 
objects known to man — the class which makes and 
rules. And since God was conceived as superior and 
antecedent to man, the conclusion was easy that man 
was made in the image of God. 

This profound though vague thought goes on broad- 
ening and growing clearer through the Bible, until it 
culminates in the revelation by Jesus that God is our 
Father. This reached, we no longer see man made 
in God's image, an arbitrary copy, but man born of 
God, and so showing by the very constitution of his 
being and by its origin, the nature of his divine 
Parent. This relationship to God, and the duty of 
allegiance which it implies, are made the sanction of 
the commands and appeals of the Bible ; and the 
development of the possibilities which it implies in us 
is held up as our highest prize. 



98 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

If the question be raised how far this can go and 
to what man may hope to attain, the biblical writers 
have not much to say in answer; their words are 
more of the race than the goal. Indeed, it is con- 
fessed that they do not see the end: "Eye hath not 
seen . . . the things which God hath prepared foi 
them which love him." " It doth not yet appear 
what we shall be, but ... we shall be like him." 
Upon this point, however, as upon so many others, 
a revelation is made in the person of Christ, which is 
nowhere given in formal words. He is the head and 
type of the race, and we therefore see in him what it 
is to be the child of God. 

It is instructive to notice that no expression is 
used to signify his relation to God which is not also 
applied to men in general, the difference being that 
the common terms are specialized for him by a signifi- 
cant emphasis. If Christ is the express image of the 
divine person, we too are made in the image of God. 
If he is the Son of God, we too are sons of God. If 
he declares that he and his Father are one, he also 
prays that we may be taken into the same unity, and 
even in the same manner : " As thou, Father, art in 
me and I in thee, that they also may be made one in 
us." And if to have seen Jesus is to have seen the 
Father, even so the application of this title to God 
declares that the highest social attitude of man sets 
before our eyes the attitude of God. 



THE NATURE OF MAN 99 

It is plain, therefore, that in the meaning of the 
Bible no line can be drawn which separates the human 
from the divine. We begin with the consciousness of 
great possibilities amid our imperfect lives ; we see 
these developed in nobler and nobler examples by the 
best of men ; we witness in Christ the perfection of 
excellence which never loses its familiar characteristics 
while it rises and sweeps on, human to the last glimpse, 
till it transcends our vision and blends with God, — 
" I and my Father are one." 

Another intrinsic characteristic of man which the 
Bible announces is his Immortality. This topic has al- 
ready engaged us as a part of the new revelation made 
by Jesus. But the great importance of the subject as 
belonging to the biblical view of man, the further 
light which this relation throws upon it, and the con- 
firmatory evidence which grows out of its prompt, 
enthusiastic, and enduring acceptance, may well excuse 
a second handling of the theme, even though this 
involve some repetition. 

So intent are the biblical writers upon present 
things, that this look towards the future is late to ap- 
pear ; and only with the resurrection of Jesus is the 
immortality of man made plain. After that, and imme- 
diately after, it became the steadfast conviction of all 
Christians, to which the Church has clung through all 
her fortunes and all her follies. Indeed, so powerfully 



ioo THE PURPOSE OF GOD 

did this conviction root itself among Christian beliefs, 
that when the world was sunk in ignorance, and the 
only ruling forces were the strong hand and priestcraft, 
the whole social fabric was dominated, and the most 
powerful sovereigns were coerced, by hope or fear of 
the future life. The suddenness and strength with 
which the belief in immortality became a factor of 
human life, is one of the wonders of history. Nothing 
is known which can account for it, except the facts 
recorded in the New Testament. We there find the 
death and resurrection of Jesus immediately followed 
by a new boldness and constancy in his disciples, and 
we find them uniformly dwelling upon his resurrec- 
tion as a fundamental part of what they have to teach. 
It is presented as an essential of Christian faith : " If 
Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain." 

And yet it is remarkable that there are in the New 
Testament no disquisitions upon immortality, and very 
little is said about the future life. No attempt is made 
to argue from the resurrection of Jesus to that of other 
men ; but it is quietly assumed that the latter is estab- 
lished by the former. Now, as the Bible contains 
several other narratives of the resuscitation of dead 
persons, and as no importance is attributed to them 
except for those immediately concerned, it becomes an 
interesting question why the revival of Jesus was so 
deeply important. 



THE NATURE OF MAN IOI 

Let us clearly understand that the question is why, 
and not whether ; for though we could find no reason, 
the fact of history would remain ; namely, that the 
most powerful influence introduced among men since 
history began, rested in the consciousness of its first 
propagators, and has rested ever since, on the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus from the dead. 

The cause of this pre-eminence is to be found in the 
whole work of Jesus. He labored to develop and 
establish the conception that man is the son of God. 
He found the world bent upon physical life. Men 
thought of themselves as bodies, carrying within them, 
indeed, a mysterious something, but essentially bodies, 
with this secondary adjunct. To their consciousness 
they were busy with physical interests, having now and 
then merely a touch of sentiment, not obviously of 
material importance, and therefore to be little encour- 
aged. It was the first man, of the earth earthy, and 
the earth was his portion. If there were any Lord 
from heaven, he was an august Outsider, wanted for 
dire emergencies, and therefore to be kept favorable 
by prudent men, but having his own sphere, and mostly 
leaving us to ours. 

This had been the attitude of the world always and 
everywhere. Now and then, it is true, a voice had 
protested. There had been men in all lands who had 
insisted that the invisible things of man are more 



102 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

powerful and have more value than his body ; that 
they and not it are the true man. Some of these 
teachers had won the admiration, even the adoration, 
of mankind. They had illustrated in their lives the 
greatness of the spirit ; had resisted the temptations 
of sense, wealth, even of power, and multitudes had 
hung on their words and avowed their doctrines. But 
each of them, having had his day, had succumbed to 
that inexorable fact of physical life, — death. The 
wise man had had the same end as the fool. The 
voice ceased, the teacher was no more, the disciples 
went each his way, and the complex visible life of the 
world moved on as if no word had been spoken. 
When his enemies could do nothing else with the 
prophet or sage, he could be killed, and that was the end. 
Now, Jesus had filled this rble of protestant with un- 
exampled success. He had insisted that the worth 
and power of man lie in his divine, not his animal, 
nature ; that a man might pay too high a price for 
the gain of the whole world; that meekness inherits 
the earth, and purity, peace, and righteousness win the 
true blessings. He had touched life at all points, 
and at each had triumphantly sustained his theme. 
Friends and enemies thronged around him, almost 
equally dangerous to his purpose. His friends would 
make him king, would have him divide estates, would 
enclose him in dignities, would dictate his course ; his 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 103 

enemies would entangle him in politics, make him lose 
himself in subtle dialectics, or silence the exuberant 
zeal of his followers. But nothing could pervert him. 
He put aside all interference without malice or excite- 
ment, and at each encounter left none in doubt that 
the spiritual had overcome the worldly. 

At last there was nothing left for his enemies but 
the old, the infallible resource. They could not 
seduce, they could not silence him, but they could 
kill him. It had never failed, and neither friends nor 
foes dreamed that it could fail now. So he was 
crucified, dead, and buried. His disciples, who " had 
hoped that it should have been he," gave up the 
contest. Their hearts were full of tender memories ; 
there were high resolves, too, and thanks for such 
deep instruction. But since he would not use force, 
not even one single sword-stroke, why of course the 
Sanhedrim and the legions had been too much for 
him. The strong hand is only to be resisted by a 
stronger; and beautiful and true as they held his 
beatitudes, these are not the things, as they still 
fancied, that rule this hard, coarse world. So the 
fair, delightful interlude was ended, and it remained 
only to go back to their fishing. 

We can now understand all that it meant when this 
mood of the disciples was broken by the startling 
word, " The Lord is risen ! " And when he came to 



104 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

them again all himself, teaching the same benignant 
doctrines, simply taking up again the old theme that 
the spirit rules, all the delusions and sophistries of 
worldliness crumbled away, all the terrors of authority 
and force became empty dreams. They knew what 
life is and what its fountain. 

Viewed in this way, the resurrection is important 
not as a physical but as a spiritual fact; not because 
the body having been dead was alive again, but 
because the spirit, with all its well-known character- 
istics, having been expelled from the body and absent 
awhile, returned unchanged, took up its intercourse 
with old friends just where this had been broken off, 
and used the once dead body again as its facile instru- 
ment. And all this occurred not in some corner, nor 
with doubtful circumstances. Jesus was emphatically 
a public character. He died as he had lived, full in 
the eye of the nation. His death was from a familiar 
cause, with many witnesses, and officially attested. 
He returned to his friends alive after two days ; ate 
with them, talked with them, met them many times, 
and was seen by hundreds who knew him well. It 
was the most perfect demonstration possible that the 
soul of a man is so entire in itself as to suffer no harm 
when the body dies, and to be found, if by any means 
we can thereafter have knowledge of it, complete and 
perfect in all its faculties. All men knew that the 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 105 

body without the soul is dead. It was here proved 
that the soul without the body retains all the fulness 
of life. 

Now this, considered merely as an occurrence, of 
course proves nothing about the subsequent duration 
of the soul. But with this Jesus had been dealing 
from the first. He had assiduously taught that the 
spirit of man is the offspring of God, partaker of the 
divine nature, superior to the things of the world. His 
whole life had shown the truth of this ; and when it 
was also shown that the tremendous crisis of death 
had no effect upon the soul's integrity, what could be 
imagined that could harm it? The assurance, then, 
that the offspring of God share his immortality was 
complete in teaching and in demonstration. That it 
was complete, the influence of it upon the Church, and 
through the Church upon the world for so many ages, 
proves beyond question. 

It is noticeable that the New Testament is content 
to leave the matter here. " How are the dead raised, 
and with what manner of body do they come ? " are 
spurned as foolish questions ; and similarly we have 
nothing of the occupations or surroundings of souls 
beyond death. Doubtless the writers knew as little of 
this as we do. All is referred to the wisdom of God, 
" As it hath pleased him." 

The great principle thus comes into notice again 



106 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

that the Bible is a book for life, for the present. It is 
of the greatest importance that we know ourselves to 
be the offspring of God, intrinsically immortal. It is 
inexpressibly comforting and helpful for the conduct 
of life, to be sure that death has no dominion over us. 
But, this assurance given, we are remanded to our 
present tasks, renewed and strengthened. Doubtless, 
too, since whatever might be told us must be in terms 
of our previous experience, there is no possibility of 
conveying to us a conception of the state of dis- 
embodied souls. God might declare, but man could 
not understand. 

We have next to consider those active faculties of 
human nature by which man performs the conduct of 
life. And it must be constantly kept in mind that the 
Bible, being a book of active life, and in the words of 
men who were busy with the world, addresses its readers 
as men address each other, and not in the abstrac- 
tions of the study. There is no psychological analysis 
in the Bible. Whatever appears to have this character 
is but passing comment from the writer's point of 
view upon some phase of conduct. We can certainly 
make out the elements of a psychology from the 
biblical writers; and, fairly deduced, it is consistent 
throughout the book, and fits accurately the facts of 
experience. But it is only a deduction, and not an 



THE NATURE OE MAN. 107 

extract from the Bible, and has only the authority 
which it may derive from the character and ability of 
those who formulate it. 

We shall find it convenient to study these active 
faculties under four heads, — Reason, Sentiment, Con- 
science, and Will. 

Reason. The Bible always addresses man as a rea- 
sonable being. Dealing with those affairs which con- 
stitute our current life, it assumes that we have at least 
a superficial understanding of them, and that we are 
capable of penetrating more and more deeply into their 
meaning and relations. It is fully recognized that life 
suggests problems beyond our grasp, and mysteries of 
being which we may not hope to fathom. But no dis- 
credit is thrown upon our rational faculties as regards 
things within their scope because other things are 
surmised which lie beyond their scope. Nor is the 
emphasis of importance laid upon things beyond rea- 
son, but on those with which we are easily familiar, 
and which make the working factors of that daily life 
with which the Bible deals. 

The history of Christian thought shows a sad forget- 
fulness of this plain fact. When the first theologians 
began to reduce the faith of the Church to method, it 
seemed natural to give the first place to those high 
themes which so widely differentiated the new teaching 



108 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

from all former philosophies ; and so the being of God, 
the nature of man's soul, the inward processes of sal- 
vation, took the first rank. The early divisions and 
quarrels of the Church turned on these recondite ques- 
tions, and the farther they were from any real grasp of 
reason, the hotter waged the fight. Consequently, for 
long stretches of Christian history those who have 
held convictions upon these subjects which they were 
unable to maintain by reason against the adverse rea- 
soning of others, have denounced reason as the mother 
of heresies, and insisted upon a faith which should 
not rest on understanding. We need only search the 
Scriptures to see how far all this is from their tone and 
their conclusions. They rest the excellence of man 
and his acceptance with God on the right ordering of 
heart and conduct, and pass without requirement those 
things which cannot be understood. 

But the Bible is far from requiring a life fashioned 
wholly by reason. As we do not, so neither does it, ex- 
pect that man will put all other motives aside and have 
logical warrant for every action. Sentiment and the 
moral sense are abundantly recognized and sanctioned, 
and even the errors of reason are condoned. Espe- 
cially is there no biblical assumption that errors of 
thought upon matters difficult for thought to grasp are 
deeply hurtful to man's welfare. The philosophizing 
tendency of Christian teachers has gone so far in this 



THE NATURE OF MAN 109 

wrong direction as to lay an intolerable burden upon the 
conscience. The greater part of ecclesiastical tyranny 
and cruelty has been based upon, or has sheltered 
itself behind, the claim that the intellectual beliefs of 
opponents were sufficient to forfeit the favor of God 
and the right to the Christian name ; and this not as 
leading to or justifying wrong conduct, but solely on 
the ground that wrong belief is inexcusable sin. The 
awful history of persecutions shows with undeniable 
clearness how greatly this idolatry of opinion departs 
from the spirit of the gospel, and how unsafe all judg- 
ments are which abandon Christ's rule, " By their fruits 
shall ye know them." 

The process of bringing men into harmony with God 
must, of course, include their reasoning powers ; and 
as by the nature of reason it cannot be coerced by 
arbitrary requirements, therefore it must be part of the 
divine purpose that through the exercise of reason, 
now successful and now failing, we shall little by little 
reach for ourselves the knowledge of the truth. And 
this implies on God's part all the patient forbearance 
with error so necessary and so well known to human 
teachers. But let it be observed that for this process 
to be sure and safe, there must lie behind it all such an 
inherent correspondence of human reason with funda- 
mental truth, that when all obstacles are removed and 
truth is presented plainly to our sight, we shall by all 
the impulse of our nature recognize and hold it. 



HO THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

The summary, then, of what we learn from the Bible 
upon this subject is, that man's reason is a divinely 
appointed and legitimate power, destined at last to 
comprehend the whole meaning and intent of God as 
expressed in the ordering of the world ; that reason is 
but one of several co-ordinate powers which enable 
us as children of God to fashion the conduct of our 
lives ; that no exercise of reason, however exalted, can 
justify the ignoring or suppression of the co-ordinate 
powers ; and that the honest errors of reason are in- 
evitable incidents of its development, and involve 
neither guilt nor lasting harm. 

Sentiment. The Bible everywhere appeals to the 
familiar sentiments of men. Awe and gratitude, love 
and fear, shame and aspiration, are ever-recurring sanc- 
tions ; while joy, sorrow, and personal affection are 
recognized on every page as essential ingredients of 
life. Even when the formal appeal is to reason, there 
seldom fails to be an undertone addressed to senti- 
ment, and often the latter swells into full control. 
And there is not from first to last a word to imply that 
the sentiments so appealed to are any other than those 
we knew by the same names in our daily intercourse. 
Nor are they merely permitted or desirable elements of 
life. They are fundamental. Jesus makes love the 
basis of law, whether concerning our relations to God 



THE NATURE OF MAN ill 

or to man, and his apostles dwell emphatically on this 
idea. And further, Paul declares what we might have 
legitimately inferred, that the same foundation which 
God lays for the law of our duty is the basis of his 
conduct towards us. Love is of the essence of the 
divine nature ; and Christ was sent, summarizing the 
divine revelations and assuring our salvation, because 
" God so loved the world." 

Theology has sadly lost sight of this biblical teach- 
ing because its authors have lived and thought away 
from the current life of men. They have thus come to 
place the intellect and the will in a supremacy which 
the experience of life does not warrant. Step by step 
the relations of men to God, and consequently their 
relations to each other, were formulated by a cruel 
logic, till the tender sentiments were cast out alike 
from earth and heaven. All this, however, was closet 
work, having terrible consequences here and there in 
the world, but always resisted, and gradually conquered, 
by the Christian consciousness. When God became 
remote and awful, Jesus was the tender intercessor ; 
and when he too was transformed into a stern judge, 
his mother was given a place in the divine counsels, 
that her woman's heart might succor men. However 
ecclesiastics thundered or persecuted, every age of 
Christendom has left evidences that the people of God 
still existed, scattered through the world for its salva- 



H2 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

tion, constituting the real hope and strength of the 
gospel ; and even though bewildered in mind, still 
holding fast with the allegiance of the heart to the 
infinite goodness of God. 

The enlightenment of our time and the exigences of 
mission work are rapidly bringing the whole Church to 
the position of the biblical writers, and making plain 
to all that the intellect cannot grasp the purpose and 
the methods of God's dealings with us, without the 
constant co-operation of the heart. Since God is 
love, in order to bring us into harmony with himself, 
he must cultivate to the utmost the same element of 
our being. 

Conscience. The conscience has already been dis- 
cussed as to its nature and functions. It remains to 
consider how the Bible deals with it. 

There is no discourse about conscience in the Bible ; 
but from the first pages it is assumed that men know 
right from wrong, and that they recognize the claims 
of the right. This is not only implied in the very fact 
of giving laws, but the reproaches and rebukes of sin 
are addressed as to beings who sinned against light. 
Nor is this confined to those who had received the 
word of God, but appears in the rebukes of gentile 
nations. So that the Bible regards the conscience as 
belonging to human nature by fundamental consitu- 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 113 

tion, and as existing under all circumstances. It is, 
indeed, expressly asserted by Paul, that " The nations 
which knew not the law did by nature the things con- 
tained in the law." 

Theology, sacrificing obvious facts to the demands 
of a narrowly logical system, has asserted a lost con- 
dition of man, in which he has no longer any impulse 
to good ; but no such total paralysis of conscience is 
recognized in the Bible. Its appeals to men in gen- 
eral, and even to the vilest, assume a response from 
within which approves the claims of righteousness. It 
finds all sinners, like Saul, consciously kicking against 
the pricks. And so far does this method of the Bible 
go, that it leaves largely for men to determine what 
their duties are. Of course the extent of this varies 
as the process of biblical development goes on. At 
first the tendency is rather to specific commands, 
although these are given in such terms as to require 
much comment and definition from the individual con- 
science. But later in the Old Testament, and every- 
where in the New, the force of commandment is re- 
moved from definite injunction and laid upon " Truth 
in the inward parts." 

The weakness of human nature and the ambition of 
ecclesiastics have greatly delayed the acceptance of 
this truth. Men crave relief from the responsibility 
of deciding what their duties are ; -and those who seek 



114 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

to rule them eagerly make the decision, turning the 
whole force of conscience towards obedience to defi- 
nite commands, upon which the common man passes 
no judgment. Just in proportion to the ignorance of 
any time or community has this process succeeded. 
But in all times there have been consciences which 
could not abdicate the duty of deciding upon the re- 
quirements of righteousness ; and the progress of 
Christian enlightenment is bringing all to understand 
that every conscience must act for itself. It necessar- 
ily follows that a man's own conscience, honestly con- 
sulted and faithfully followed, must be for that man 
the supreme law of his life. Paul writes, " To him 
that thinketh anything unclean, to him it is unclean ; " 
and " He that doubteth is condemned if he eat." And 
Jesus pleads for his murderers because " They know 
not what they do." 

It must not be forgotten, and it is not ignored in the 
Bible, that ethical decisions, however honestly and 
carefully made, are often erroneous, and are con- 
demned even by those who made them, after they 
have obtained more light. And the question, how it 
can consist with the justice of God to leave men to the 
consequences of following a monitor so often in error, 
can only be answered under the condition that these 
consequences are always capable of remedy, and that 
God is pledged to the ultimate result. 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 115 

Will. In the intercourse of life we assume that 
each man can in the main determine his own conduct, 
and can more or less influence his surroundings. So 
that if a man's will is won to a certain course in mat- 
ters which belong to him, the end is made probable. 
This is the attitude of the Bible, but with the addition 
that at the same time and in the same affairs the in- 
violable sovereignty of God is always presupposed. 
But whenever men have seriously addressed their 
thoughts to these two facts, they have felt a sense of 
conflict, actual or possible, between the divine and the 
human will ; and since it is impossible to conceive the 
divine will as frustrated, the question has necessarily 
arisen whether the will of man is effectually self-deter- 
mining, or must act, in order to act at all, in exact 
accordance with the will of God. 

Now, it is remarkable that the Bible does not dis- 
cuss this question. In the very few places which touch 
upon it, the question itself is rebuked as if it attacked 
the divine authority. This is easily explained when 
we remember how the Bible has grown out of practical 
life, and that in daily affairs the question does not 
arise. So persistently, however, do the thoughts of 
biblical students return to this point, that all such 
study has been colored by it, and we must give it con- 
sideration if we would escape the difficulties which 
have thus gathered about the understanding of the 



lib THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

Bible. Of course we need not linger over the hair- 
splitting distinction that man is at liberty to will any- 
thing, but has no power to put his volition into action 
unless it accord with God's will. This evades the real 
question, which is how, and to what extent, the two 
wills can co-exist, of which the Bible freely speaks, and 
to which daily life bears constant witness ; namely, the 
sovereign, invincible will of God directed to all the 
affairs of men, and the will of man effectual for order- 
ing his own conduct, either well or ill, and to some 
extent for modifying his surroundings. 

But before we begin the discussion of the human 
will, it is necessary to guard against a certain mis- 
understanding which easily besets the subject. The 
human unit is the entire man. We distinguish facul- 
ties, — judgment, sentiment, will, etc., — and we speak 
of each acting as if it could dissociate itself from the 
others ; but, in fact, it is always the man tr^at acts, 
now with one and now another faculty predominant, 
but in his normal state never with actual elimination 
of any part. When, therefore, the will is said to con- 
sider or to decide, it is implied that some action of the 
judgment occurs; but the consequent exertion of will 
is so much the more conspicuous, and we know so very 
little of the more hidden processes of the mind, that 
our attention fastens on the predominant faculty, and 
something which really belongs to another is attributed 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 117 

to it. Nor can any error grow out of this inaccuracy 
of speech so long as our conclusions are always sub- 
mitted to the test of actual experience. This discussion 
will, therefore, use without scruple those expressions 
which the habitual intercourse of life has made familiar. 

We may consider the will of man as aimed in three 
directions, — towards the physical world, his fellow-men, 
or his spiritual intercourse with God. 

No metaphysics could persuade a practical mind 
that man cannot to a useful extent impose his will on 
his physical surroundings. The small acts of every 
day, and the continued efforts of individuals and gene- 
rations, effect changes in the location, the combinations, 
and the development of matter and of organisms, which 
can neither be denied as doubtful nor overlooked as 
unimportant. 

And yet it must be noticed that man has willed 
many things in this field which he has not been able to 
accomplish ; and he has discovered that all his power 
over nature is conditioned by natural laws. So that 
when his will merely follows impulse or the idea of a 
result he often fails ; but by learning the laws of ma- 
terial things, and directing his volitions according to 
these laws, he may at last find a way to his ends. No 
exception to this has been discovered, and men who 
have been taught by their own or others' experience 



Ii8 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

make no attempt to force natural things by bare voli- 
tion of results ; but having first learned by what 
methods, if at all, the laws of nature permit them to 
approach their desired end, they push their will by 
successive stages along these ways till the goal is 
reached. No final limit has been found to the con- 
quests of the human will over the physical world, based 
upon conformity to the laws of nature. 

But further, it is found that natural laws which 
seemed at first unconnected and arbitrary constitute a 
harmonious system which more and more commends 
itself to our approval as we more fully understand it ; 
so that if it were possible for man at one or another 
point to substitute his own volition for the law, it would 
be a retrograde movement, whose ultimate result must 
be less satisfactory to man himself than if the law had 
not been broken. 

And so we reach this conclusion : The physical 
world, organized by a wisdom greater than man's, and 
held to its fundamental constitution by a power which 
he cannot override, is given to man for his use, the 
condition of this use being that he shall respect the 
laws of its constitution ; and the reason of this condi- 
tion being that the world under these laws will better 
respond to his wisest wishes than under any substitute 
which he might devise. Man's conformity, then, in 
understanding and in desire, to the wisdom which or- 



THE NATURE OF MAN 119 

dained the world, is the measure and the only limit of 
his dominion over matter. 

When a man attempts to impose his will upon his 
neighbor, the case has other features ; for it is now will 
against will. But so different are men, that one will is 
always stronger than another, often than many others ; 
and experience proves that it is possible for the human 
will to control the wills of other men as positively as it 
controls material things. This is done in two ways. 
By hypnotism and perhaps other psychic influences an 
absolute compulsion is attained, not widely different 
from the control of will over matter, and limited by 
analogous inviolable laws ; and while the recognized 
display of this power is infrequent and subject to very 
unusual conditions, yet probably it enters more or less 
obscurely into most cases where one mind controls 
another. 

The common influence of will over will, however, is 
obtained by means of persuasion, in which process 
intelligence and emotion are enlisted to determine the 
subject will. But, whatever the process, no one famil- 
iar with daily life doubts that certain wills dominate 
and control others. It is to be observed, however, 
that, as in regard to matter so in this case, this is not 
accomplished by mere capricious exercise of the will, 
but by method, and often after repeated and prolonged 



120 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

effort. So that the dominant will becomes aware of 
laws governing the wills it would subject, under which 
alone it can reach its ends. And these are not merely 
laws of process, they also govern the result ; and it is 
with the latter that we are most concerned in this dis- 
cussion. The most potent of these laws is that which 
maintains the unity of human interests, so that no por- 
tion of a community can reach truly beneficial and 
lasting attainments at the expense of the other por- 
tions. In consequence of this law, which all history 
proves, if a man has succeeded in imposing his will 
upon his neighbors for his own selfish aggrandizement 
and to their harm, it presently turns out that with 
his seeming gain he has incurred such danger or loss 
that, on the whole, he has missed his own advantage. 
The law which he had neglected, or thought to over- 
ride, has proved invincible ; while, on the other hand, 
the man who has led the multitude for the common 
good wins rewards beyond even the hopes of the self- 
ish leader. So that the same result appears when the 
will rules other wills as when it rules matter. The 
inviolable laws, under which alone success can be 
reached, open the way to more satisfactory results than 
could be attained if these laws did not exist. 

Now, if we turn our attention to the will when it is 
struggling with the laws which it should obey, we find 
its condition is essentially one of ignorance. For 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 121 

although the willing mind may be aware of these op- 
posing laws, and may set itself to defeat them, it cer- 
tainly is not aware of their strength and the hopeless- 
ness of its attack ; and especially it is unaware of their 
beneficent character. These things are learned im- 
pressively only after defeat, perhaps many times re- 
peated. But to whatever extent the mind is capable 
of understanding such laws and their power, to that 
extent it is certain that a sufficient experience of de- 
feated endeavor will at last put an end to these useless 
struggles of the will. The undoubting assurance of its 
absolute impossibility necessarily puts an end to the 
willing of a given result. And this acceptance of de- 
feat in a forbidden way is the beginning of a percep- 
tion that this way has no desirable results, and that 
the defeat is therefore a benefit. 

Therefore, the bounds which the laws of God in na- 
ture and the social world set to the will, are a bondage 
only of the immature and uninstructed will, while they 
tend by their compulsion to educate this will into its 
best estate ; and when this is reached, the laws no 
longer even seem to oppose it, but are manifestly the 
shortest way to that which is now its only aim. 

So far we have considered the action of the human 
will merely as an exercise of force, studying it in the 
two fields in which we can best observe it objectively ; 
and we are now prepared to answer the postponed 



122 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

t 

question, why the assertion of an absolute divine will 

does not reduce the world to fatalism ; namely, because 
at every point in which the divine will touches the will 
of man, God aims not to compel, but to encourage and 
develop, our will ; so that seeming obstacles and defeats 
are only the means by which he brings us to learn how 
our will may most freely act, and may most perfectly 
attain the things which at our highest development we 
desire. It is not denied that God could place us under 
a rule of arbitrary fate. But he has not done this, be- 
cause it would thwart his own purpose in giving us 
being, that we might become like him. 

We come now to consider the will in man's spiritual 
intercourse with God. This is the religious aspect of 
the subject, and the part which directly concerns the 
present inquiry ; for the study of the will as directed 
towards the physical and the social worlds is pertinent 
only because it makes us acquainted with the action of 
the will where we can view it objectively, and can 
therefore most impartially consider it. With this third 
phase the subject is somewhat changed. We have 
hitherto looked at the power of the will to impress 
itself upon external objects, and the laws which help 
or hinder this result. But when man turns his will 
towards God he can no longer hope to bend this divine 
Object to his purposes, and our inquiry can only seek 



THE NATURE OF MAN 123 

to know how the man who wills is in this case affected 
by his own volitions. 

But before we go farther, it is necessary clearly to 
understand what we mean by man's intercourse with 
God upon this field. Since there can be no thought of 
man's coercing God, the only relation possible is one 
of harmony or discord. In regard to some given thing 
the will of God and the will of man come upon the 
scene. It must be assumed that man can somehow 
know what is the will of God concerning this thing, 
and then the human will takes some attitude, follows 
some process, reaches some results in relation to the 
divine. Now how can man know this divine will ? 

We have seen that God addresses man through the 
experience of life and the conscience, and that what- 
ever may claim to be a command of God necessarily 
comes as part of human experience, and is accredited 
or rejected by the conscience. There can, therefore, 
be no one way in which men are certified of the will of 
God concerning the successive details of their lives ; 
but rather, each man's conscience decides when the 
circumstances of life set this or that duty before him ; 
and this decision of conscience carefully and sincerely 
made is for him, then and there, the voice of God. 
Even if the same man should subsequently decide that 
his first decision was mistaken, the fact remains that 
until the new light came the first decision was his 



124 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

highest law. The subject, therefore, upon which we 
now enter is the action of a man's will in response to 
his own conscience, this being but a clearer expression 
for the relation of the human will to God's. 

When the will adopts for its own choice the demands 
of conscience, and heartily strives for those ends, this 
is virtue. When the will refuses the demands of con- 
science, this is sin. And the whole action of the will 
on the moral field consists of repeated choices between 
sin and virtue. The question whether it is able to pro- 
duce objective results according to its choice is noth- 
ing to the point; for the experience of life and the 
teaching of the Bible alike declare that the quality of 
sin or virtue inheres in the volition. 

When we seek the causes of the will's choice, we 
are first confronted with motives. Motives certainly 
influence the choice of the will, and it is not easy to 
conceive it without them ; but they have no compelling 
power. In fact, we do not know of any power which 
can compel the will. It hears, weighs, and decides ; 
and while the effect of individual motives may often 
be foreseen with much certainty, yet there are enough 
exceptional volitions which seem to set all motives at 
defiance, to assure us that the will is not compelled. Its 
decision is like a creative act of God, — a new departure. 

But this consideration is incomplete, whether with 



THE NATURE OF MAN 125 

regard to God or man, until we remember that the will 
is not a being, but an attribute which is inseparably 
combined with others. This distinction is of the first 
importance, and is easily understood.' The Bible, for 
instance, declares that " it is impossible for God to lie ; " 
and we readily understand this as meaning, not that 
any collocation of words is impossible, but that the 
perfection and harmony of the divine nature would be 
so outraged by a lie, that the divine will cannot consent 
to it. A divine lie would be divine suicide. Now, in 
the same way the will of man is under the necessity of 
corresponding with his other attributes. We freely 
repel a slander against the man we trust, by insisting 
that he could not do such a thing. And if the accusa- 
tion should prove true, we should sadly confess he was 
not the man we had supposed. " A good tree cannot 
bring forth evil fruit." Indeed, so plain is this inter- 
dependence of the will and the rest of the man, that 
when we see arbitrary actions repeated and continued 
in a way that violates the usual course of human con- 
duct, we declare the man insane — the balance of his 
faculties has been destroyed. Now, in this necessary 
accord of the will with the other faculties lies the key 
to all the alleged mysteries of sin and of redemption ; 
and to this we shall have to recur as our study of the 
subject proceeds. 

Having well in mind these limits to the power of 



126 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

motives over the will, we may now return to the study 
of their action. Life subjects the will to motives of 
various kinds, which urge it in different directions. 
These appeal to the intellect, to the sentiments, and to 
the passions of the flesh. They are so many, and form 
such numberless combinations, that each man's position 
is unique, and we can judge each other only on general 
principles, subject always to correction for the individ- 
ual. Some of the motives re-enforce the conscience 
and influence the will to comply, while others tend 
to set will against conscience. The latter are called 
temptations. No man can live and escape tempta- 
tions, which, indeed, constitute the real tasks of life. 
They arise from every department of life ; and so from 
every side the will is urged against the conscience. 
Perhaps the subtlest and least remarked of temptations 
is that which aims merely to defy authority. We know 
the charm of forbidden things in daily experience ; and 
at bottom the commands of the conscience may often be 
resisted for no other reason than that they are commands. 
All temptations persuade the will by promising satis- 
factions, from the subtle one just named to the grossest 
lusts of the flesh. But the Bible and our own experi- 
ence equally teach that these promises are fallacious. 
Either the satisfaction is not found at all, or it is so 
brief as to be worthless, or it entails pain or trouble 
which far outweighs it. Therefore, the seekers of im- 



THE NATURE OF MAN 127 

moral pleasure are always looking for a new pleasure, 
the old having speedily palled. But the combinations 
of life are so numerous, and the craving for immediate 
satisfaction is so urgent, that to each discredited temp- 
tation another succeeds, smiling with promise. On 
the other hand, the motives to obedience, while they 
promise less, yield more. Experience proves with 
equal certainty that the way of the transgressor is 
hard, and that wisdom's are ways of pleasantness. 
Nor are the satisfactions of virtue brief, with need of 
continual change ; they persist and accumulate, and 
seem native to the soul after whatever length of enjoy- 
ment. Besides, every faculty which is exercised in the 
pursuit of virtue becomes stronger by the exercise, and 
thus ministers a new delight. So that we come here 
upon the same state of things which we found in the 
action of the will upon physical and social objects ; 
that the law, namely, which seems to limit and deny, 
in reality guides the will to its most perfect exercise, 
and puts within its reach the greater good. 

It might seem as if this covered the field of man's 
moral history ; as if a moderate experience of good and 
evil, with the testimony of others who have made the 
same experiments, would suffice to set us all upon the 
side of virtue, and abolish sin. That this is not so 
results largely from another factor in the action of the 
will which we have not yet considered ; namely, habit. 



128 THE PURPOSE OF GOD 

When a particular motive has once persuaded the will 
to act, the second demand of this motive is more read- 
ily obeyed, and so on till the obedience becomes habit- 
ual and of course. And this is true whether the motive 
tend to virtue or to sin. A recurring temptation acts 
upon the will, therefore, in two opposite ways : the re- 
peated demonstration of its fallacy tends to weaken 
the force of the temptation, but also the repeated 
yielding of the will tends to lessen the degree of 
force required. And so it sometimes results that men, 
after a prolonged evil course, succumb to a temptation 
which allures so little, that at first they would not have 
regarded it ; while other men, reversing the process 
by a steady course of resistance to some formidable 
temptation, come at last hardly to feel that it solicits 
them. And so intricate are the combinations of life, 
and so little can we judge another's temptations or his 
strength, that none can prophesy which way the bal- 
ance will turn when a man is subjected to recurrent 
temptation. Hence has arisen the conclusion that the 
outcome of each man's moral experience is uncertain. 
Such a state of things, however, would be incompatible 
with the purpose which we have found God adminis- 
tering, and we shall see when we come to consider the 
dealings of God with man, that he has abundantly pro- 
vided for this. 

Under the present head it only remains to point out 



THE NATURE OF MAN 129 

that final element in the action of the will which con- 
stitutes the door of divine access. 

The will, as we have seen, is not a being, but a fac- 
ulty, and in all its healthy action it preserves a con- 
formity to its associate faculties. Now, the man taken 
as a whole, is by no means indifferent between virtue 
and sin. He is the offspring of God, and therefore, 
however he may become the servant of sin, this is to 
the end a foreign master, while to virtue he is native. 
If, then, the will inclined to evil dominates the entire 
man, it can only be because his other elements are im- 
mature and not developed in their due proportions. If 
the judgment be weak and the lusts strong, the motives 
to gross vice will easily master the will. If the intel- 
lect be forcible and sentiment dull, the suggestions of 
pride and ambition will find a ready ear. Therefore, 
to redeem the will once addicted to sin, it is necessary 
to restore the balance of the man and effect a harmony 
of all his powers. This done, the various motives 
which address him will have each only its due influence, 
and the native affinity of the soul for good will deter- 
mine his volitions. For the whole purpose of God 
rests on the fact that man — and every man — is so 
fashioned in God's image, that to whatever extent he 
sees things as Gods sees them (that is, as they are), to 
that extent he desires and wills concerning them what 
God desires and wills. 



130 THE F UK POSE OF GOD. 



VIII. 
THE PROBLEM OF SIN. 

WE come now to the last grand division of bibli- 
cal teaching, — the relations of man to God. 
By virtue of his physical nature man is subject to the 
care and rule which God exercises over the world ; but 
by virtue of his spiritual being he constitutes with God 
a class apart, of which class there are no other mem- 
bers known to us. Man therefore sustains to God 
relations which are peculiar. The importance of these 
relations grows out of man's power to give or refuse 
consent to the will of God ; and the subject may best 
be approached by considering God's method of deal- 
ing with the rebellious will of man ; that is, with sin. 
This will lead us to study the whole field of Christ's 
work ; but the first question which confronts us is how 
such a phenomenon can exist under the government 
of an almighty Ruler, whose purpose is universal 
harmony. 

We have considered God as the Author alike of the 
world and of the human soul. And we found his crea- 
tive energy not to be a primary force giving origin to 
secondary causes and then leaving these to effect their 



THE PROBLEM OF SIN. 13 1 

results by some inherent power ; but it appeared that 
second causes are merely methods or channels through 
which the power of God uniformly works, so that those 
causes could not for an instant continue to act without 
his attention. Every bud, therefore, which opens in 
the spring, and every sparrow which falls, is moved by 
vital force or by gravity only in the sense that God's 
will produces these results by an orderly process, to 
which we give one or the other of these names. 

Now, the same train of thought requires us to be- 
lieve that every man is constituted as he is, and meets 
the experiences which fall to him, simply because God 
will have it so. Complex strains of heredity, early 
circumstances, example, education, are simply our ap- 
prehension and our titles of the orderly processes by 
which the single divine energy accomplishes its pur- 
pose. Whatever results of a man's, life, therefore, are 
the necessary outcome of his environment acting upon 
his native characteristics, exist because God will have 
them so. Knowing the end he gave effect to the 
means, and therefore the end is his. But the disposal 
of man's will lies with himself, either to put himself 
in harmony with this divine procedure or to oppose it ; 
and there are, as we have seen, many inducements to 
opposition. 

Now, we have found that the motive to sin always 
is the hope of satisfaction ; and of course the satis- 



<3 2 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

faction expected from opposing conscience is supposed 
to be greater than obedience can yield. Sin, there- 
fore, is man's effort to find a course of life which will 
prove more satisfactory to himself than the course to 
which God calls him ; and if it be conceivable that 
any soul should ever find a way to greater satisfaction 
than it can obtain by obedience, then, though the way 
might be blocked, the desire of it must remain, and 
eternal sin will result. But one such case in the 
history of the world would frustrate the purpose of 
God ; and we can suppose him to tolerate man's efforts 
after a more satisfactory way than his, only because 
he knows no such way can be found or invented. In 
a word, God stakes the results of his creation and the 
accomplishment of his purpose on the certainty that 
he has made no soul but will, when it has appre- 
hended God's way, turn eagerly from all other devices 
and cleave only to him. So the answer to our ques- 
tion, how sin can have a place under God's purpose of 
universal harmony, is that these experiments after a 
satisfaction of man's devising, will result in the more 
complete and eager devotion of the human will to the 
divine — a harmony infinitely above the compliance 
of ignorant assent. 

But this question being answered, another difficulty 
presents itself, growing out of the experience of life. 
For it is abundantly proved that no amount and no 



THE PROBLEM OF SIN. 133 

clearness of demonstration can bring men from sin to 
righteousness. It needs something more than logic 
that we may see as God sees. It is true that men 
of intelligence do often discover the mistake of the 
grosser vices, and avoid them from prudential reasons 
or from self-respect ; and it is possible to conceive a 
human nature so constituted that the influences which 
we have already considered would infallibly bring it to 
the highest perfection possible for such a nature. 
Nor is it an idle fancy to discuss this ; for moralists 
without and within the Christian Church have always 
been strongly bent to address themselves to this ima- 
ginary man. 

Let us suppose a man consisting of reason, con- 
science, and will in balanced proportions. The usual 
experience of life must convince him that he cannot 
abolish the laws under which he lives, and that he can 
in no way make life so satisfactory as by obeying 
them. He will gradually become acquainted with 
those laws, even in their obscure parts, and will freely 
choose them for the ordering of his conduct. And 
when this process is fully worked out he will be a 
calm and willing follower of duty, with no besetting 
sins, and perfectly at home in the world. That God 
is his Father and men his brothers will not in the 
least occur to him ; and so long as he has the tranquil 
experience which he supposes his obedience to de- 



134 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

serve, neither the fortunes of men nor the Spirit of 
God can disturb his smooth and satisfied selfishness. 

This is the wise man of the Stoics. They recog- 
nized sentiment, to be sure, as a natural weakness of 
man, but seem not to have doubted that a sufficiently 
enlightened reason would deprive it of any influence. 
But while the noble precepts of the Stoics show the 
clearness of their conscience and the sincerity of their 
aim, the history of the school equally shows that the 
real needs of men are not touched by such a phi- 
losophy. And the reason is that this conception of 
human nature, by ignoring sentiment, omits that very 
element of man's character which furnishes the ground 
of his highest development ; and this is the point at 
which the salvation of Christ invincibly approaches 
him. But so ready is the conviction that reason is the 
true mistress of life, that even after the Gospel had 
brought what was before missing, and even among 
those who hold themselves acquainted with the true 
power of God unto salvation, this fictitious man, as the 
victim of sin, has still dominated almost every system 
of theology. And yet the missing factor in this false 
scheme lies upon the surface of every real life. Sen- 
timent overthrows reason, defies conscience, masters 
the will ; and so long as this great power is not con- 
verted to duty the law may ply all its sanctions in 
vain, for sin will rule. 



THE PROBLEM OF SIN. 135 

When we examine the Bible upon this point, we find 
the gradual development of its teaching, from germ to 
perfection, quite as distinct as in any of the particu- 
lars which we have already studied. At first there are 
simple commands with no spoken sanction, but an 
implied consciousness of the greatness of the Law- 
giver. Later comes a gradually completed code of 
laws, regulating all parts of conduct. These rest on 
the irresistible authority of their Author; but some 
considerations of sentiment are added, yet only as 
minor helps to the more recognized motives. In the 
later parts of the Old Testament a diminished stress 
is laid on the force of explicit law, and the appeal is 
especially to the heart. Yet to the end the old dis- 
pensation makes no appeal to sentiment which recog- 
nizes its transcendent power, and proposes no method 
by which the whole man may be won to God. That 
souls were so won cannot be doubted ; but this only 
shows what is everywhere obvious, that God's access 
to the souls of men is limited to no single method. 
The heart, too, has its unconscious cerebration which 
finds God. 

When we enter upon the New Testament this defect 
of the Old is plainly avowed. The statement of Jesus 
that he came to fulfil the Law, implies that this had 
aimed at something not yet accomplished. And Paul 
expressly says that God sent his Son to doom sin, 



136 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

which the Law could not do because it was weak 
through the flesh. These words state " the impossi- 
ble of the Law," and its reason ; because, namely, the 
passions of men were stronger than the known sanc- 
tions of the Law. And this brings us face to face 
with the peculiarity of the Gospel which sets it above 
all religions and philosophies, that ultimate sanction 
of duty which wins the hearts of men. The an- 
nouncement of the Gospel is of peace and goodwill. 
The preaching of Jesus dwells on meekness, purity 
of heart, love of peace, on that desire for righteous- 
ness which becomes the hunger of the soul. Upon 
love hang all the law and the prophets. Love is 
greater than eloquence, knowledge, power, self-sur- 
render. Love fulfils the law. And in this way senti- 
ment assumes its due place as a prime factor in God's 
treatment of sin. The divine law is neither abolished 
nor weakened ; on the contrary, it is strengthened and 
its triumph assured by that sanction which alone can 
reconcile the hearts of men to God, for want of which 
the old Law was weak ; namely, the revelation of the 
divine goodness through Jesus Christ. 

We have next to study in detail the process of salva- 
tion from sin. 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 137 



IX. 

THE GOSPEL STORY. 

WE must begin our study of the saving work 
wrought by Christ, with an examination of the 
documents which primarily make him known to us. 

The New Testament does not, like the Old, offer a 
progressive growth of teaching and revelation ; on the 
contrary, it begins with the summit of its perfection. 
The four Gospels contain nearly all that is told us of 
the teaching and life of Jesus, and the other writings 
are confessedly based upon this. It is of the highest 
importance, therefore, to estimate the value of the 
Gospels. 

And, first of all, it must be remembered that the 
collective story is an ineradicable part of universal 
history. If by any process of reasoning we persuade 
ourselves that the Gospel narrative is not authentic his- 
tory, a gap is left which nothing else among the records 
of mankind can fill, and the most remarkable revolu- 
tion which has occurred to man remains, as to its 
causes, an unfathomable mystery. Of all the marvels 
found in the Gospels, there is none so marvellous as 
this would be. 



138 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

No question can be raised that the first century wit- 
nessed the beginnings of the Christian Church. Nor 
is it questionable that the Church began abruptly, em- 
bodying principles of conduct which were wholly un- 
known a generation earlier, which proved so powerful 
as to alarm the civil authorities, which withstood all 
the force of terror or seduction applied to them, and 
which continue their influence to this day. It is 
equally certain that this movement started from Pales- 
tine under the name of Christ, and within a generation 
or two penetrated to all civilized countries, producing 
everywhere the same effects, not at all limited by race 
or customs, and understood by its votaries as constitut- 
ing one brotherhood of them all. 

The customs, laws, and literature of the world imme- 
diately preceding this outbreak have been searched in 
vain for any beginnings which might have led up to it ; 
and nowhere in human history is a similar revolution 
to be found. The Gospel narrative, and it alone, fully 
accounts for this new departure and for all its pecu- 
liarities. Whatever in the movement seems inexpli- 
cable by the usual motives of human conduct finds 
satisfactory explanation here. 

The first diffusion of Christianity preceded the 
records which we possess ; yet everywhere we find 
established from the first, customs, discipline, and doc- 
rines which necessarily imply the knowledge of that 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 139 

which the Gospels relate. This primary knowledge of 
the facts accounts for the prompt acceptance of these 
writings ; and in this way the Church in all lands 
vouched for the correctness of the Gospels as a narra- 
tive of the facts upon which the Church was built. 

Turning now to the documents themselves, when we 
compare the four narratives, we find each peculiar, 
and the fourth especially distinct from the other three. 
But a close examination proves that the differences, so 
far as they deserve any consideration at all, are of 
emphasis, and not radical. Every peculiarity of one 
Gospel, even of the fourth, is somewhere touched or 
suggested by the others ; so that innumerable millions 
of readers have found no stumbling-block, but have 
formed from the collective story a conception of the 
character and work of Jesus harmonious throughout. 
And the conciseness and simplicity of language, the 
selection of illustrative instances, the forcible presen- 
tation of profound truth, and the vivid portrayal of a 
unique character, as well as the fitness with which each 
Gospel supplements the others, compel us to recognize 
in this group of writings something beyond an acci- 
dental assemblage of contemporary works. 

The process of selection among various attempted 
Gospels was, of course, the work of the people of God 
scattered through many lands. They chose and re- 
tained what most accorded with their knowledge of the 



140 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

facts and their Christian consciousness of the true tone 
and spirit. But this does not account for the origi- 
nal production of such narratives ; and the specimens 
which remain to us of rejected lives of Jesus only raise 
by contrast our admiration of these. All these things 
considered, no one who believes that God has anywhere 
communicated with his people will fail to find in the 
production and assemblage of these four works the 
evident marks of his hand and purpose. 

Probably the Gospel story would not have been seri- 
ously questioned but for a feature which has been 
gravely misunderstood in every age ; namely, its account 
of what are called miracles. These all have relation 
to Jesus, as either object or agent; and they add to his 
biography an element which, when carefully studied, is 
found to differentiate it from the lives of all other 
men. In every age men have misunderstood this ele- 
ment of the life of Jesus, and in two ways : either by 
giving it such importance as to obscure the prime fac- 
tors of his work, or by stumbling at it as supernatural, 
and endeavoring to eliminate it from his history. The 
first error appeared in his very presence, and was re- 
peatedly and severely rebuked by him ; but it has sur- 
vived in every age, and still flourishes. Yet we must 
stand by the plain teaching of Jesus, and insist that 
neither he nor his biographers attached this prime 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 141 

importance to miracle. He presented it as the very 
least of his credentials, and refused every challenge to 
prove his authority in this way ; while the evangelists 
relate his miracles with a simplicity and absence of 
comment which prove that they took them merely as 
parts of a life wholly admirable. On the other hand, 
the desire which every Christian ought to feel to rescue 
the ideal Christ from the conception of a wonder-mon- 
ger, and to make clear the transcendent importance of 
his spiritual work, reacting against the first error, has 
led to a school of criticism which seeks wholly to elim- 
inate the miraculous from the New Testament narrative. 
The importance of this matter is extreme ; not so 
much from any importance which the miracles now 
have for us, as from the place which they hold in the 
narrative. The attempt has often been made to sepa- 
rate from the Gospel story those parts which record 
miracles, as being later additions in the interest of one 
or another party in the early Church ; or to explain 
them as parabolic, and not intended to be taken for 
history ; or as myths unconsciously woven about simple, 
natural occurrences. But they are too closely con- 
nected with the other elements of the story to be 
foreign additions; and the manner of their narration is 
so like all the rest, as to leave no doubt that the writers 
supposed themselves to be relating facts. This does 
not touch the theory of myth, which will be considered 



142 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

later ; but every other theory which seeks to eject the 
miraculous from the Gospel narrative, impugns either 
the honesty of the writers or their competency as wit- 
nesses. If in these particulars they mislead or were 
misled, then they are insufficient witnesses in all other 
particulars. And this has been the decision of the 
Christian consciousness, which has insisted that the 
historical character of the Gospels must stand or fall 
with the truth of the miracles. Take these away and 
we have, indeed, all the lofty suggestions and spiritual 
insight of the words attributed to Jesus, but they cease 
to rest on any historical basis, since our only historians 
are discredited. 

Now, this by no means takes away the worth of the 
Gospel teachings, so far as they commend themselves to 
our mind. But the force and authority of precept and 
promise are far greater when we see them evolved in 
the life-work of a historical man, when we can study 
his character and know him. It is not too much to 
say that the largest success of the Church in all ages 
has grown out of faith in the person of Jesus as a man 
like ourselves, whom we may intimately know through 
his memoirs. 

The only theory which leaves this historical person 
intact, while it removes the miraculous, is the theory of 
myth ; by which is meant that the admiration of igno- 
rant disciples, little by little, gave a mysterious turn to 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 143 

the traditions concerning Jesus, till trifling facts were 
gradually converted, in all the good faith of ignorance, 
into open miracles ; and that these myths became in- 
grafted upon the genuine traditions of the Church be- 
fore the latter were reduced to the narratives which we 
possess. 

But the fatal historical objection to the theory of 
myths, is that the known facts of the case do not allow 
time for their formation and diffusion. It is quite true 
that among zealous and ignorant men in a little com- 
munity, the love of the marvellous may in a very short 
time evolve a wonderful story out of simple material. 
But it is no such state of things that we have to ex- 
plain. Let us see the facts. 

Within twenty-five years of the crucifixion of Jesus, 
Paul wrote four letters, which remain to us, and which 
are admitted to be genuine by the most destructive 
criticism ; namely, the Romans, the two Corinthians, 
and the Galatians. These letters are addressed to 
communities of Christians, widely separated, but all 
acknowledging one brotherhood, so that the apostle 
addresses them all as of one faith. How they had 
been converted we do not accurately know ; but the 
process had involved no broad variations of doctrine 
or of discipline : there was, twenty-five years after the 
crucifixion, a Christian Church with a Christian faith, 
everywhere essentially the same. To these brethren 



144 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

Paul sends greeting, reproof, instruction, encourage- 
ment; and he bases these upon a certain history of 
the life of Jesus, which he assumes to be familiar to 
them all and undisputed. A fair outline of the Gospel 
narrative may be gathered from the allusions to Jesus 
in these four letters ; and when gathered it is, in out- 
line, exactly the story of the four Gospels. Our Gospels, 
indeed, were not yet written ; but the Christian faith 
was planted far and wide, and wherever it existed it 
was based on the acceptance of the very facts which 
constitute these Gospels. The biography of Jesus and 
the faith which saves had gone hand in hand all over 
the civilized world within twenty-five years of the cru- 
cifixion of Jesus. 

Now, the theory of myth requires us to believe one 
of two things : First, we may be asked to believe that 
the alleged myths had been elaborated and firmly fixed 
in the belief of the faithful before the diffusion began. 
But we know that this began a few months after the 
death of Jesus, and proceeded continuously. The time, 
therefore, is lacking for any growth of myth as part of 
the tradition of the Church before it dispersed from the 
centre in Palestine. Second, it may be claimed that 
these myths had slowly grown up during the interval 
between the crucifixion and the compilation of our 
Gospels, and that with these documents they were 
diffused throughout the Church. This, of course, im- 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 145 

plies that the original story of the life of Jesus, on 
which the first diffusion of Christianity was based, con- 
tained no assertion of miracles, and that these were 
added to the belief of the Church a generation or two 
later. It could not be imagined that such myths had 
grown up separately among the believers in different 
lands, for the narratives are all of one cast, and all bear 
distinctly Jewish characteristics. We should, therefore, 
have to believe that our Gospels, having originated in 
Palestine, or at least drawn their materials from that 
land, one or two generations after the events, and con- 
taining the myths which had there grown up, were 
spread throughout the Roman Empire, and obtained 
universal assent among the churches long since planted. 
So that a vast multitude of Christians of every grade, 
standing, and intelligence, received this new and im- 
portant element, and incorporated it into the faith 
which they had learned many years before, with entire 
and uniform acquiescence. 

But this is not all. Such a change would have been 
as great a revolution as it is now proposed to effect in 
the faith of Christendom by eliminating the miracu- 
lous ; and yet we are asked to believe that it was ac- 
complished without leaving in the literature of the 
time, or in any traditions subsequently embodied in 
literature, the slightest mention or trace. We know 
much of early dissent, but we know nothing of any 



146 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

protest against such an incursion of Oriental myths. 
To any mind accustomed to study the past from the 
historical standpoint, these considerations absolutely 
forbid the idea that the accounts of miracle are a 
mythical element introduced at a late day into the 
Gospel narrative ; and the conclusion is forced upon 
us, that when the disciples were first scattered by the 
persecution which followed the death of Stephen, they 
carried with them to all lands a story of the life of 
Jesus which contained the same element of miracle as 
do our Gospels. 

Of course this does not guarantee every account of 
miracle which may be found in the documents as we 
now possess them. These are subject to honest criti- 
cism, which will ultimately decide what are, and if any 
are not, authentic parts of the history. In fact, some 
of them seem much less certainly parts of the Gospel 
story than others. And when historical criticism shall 
have learned to deal with these questions in perfect 
fairness, — that is, when the critics have learned that 
modern science peremptorily forbids the rejection upon 
a priori grounds of any alleged phenomena, however 
strange, — then we may with confidence accept their ver- 
dict, deliberately rendered, as to whether each separate 
narrative of miracle is or is not part of the original 
history. All that is here urged is, that when the Gos- 
pels appeared, the accounts of miracle which they con- 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 147 

tained must have been already familiar to Christians 
all over the world ; and that their ready acceptance 
under these circumstances is adequate historical evi- 
dence of the truth of these accounts. 

Since, then, the Gospels are an inseparable part of 
human history, and since the miraculous element is an 
ineradicable part of the Gospel narrative, it follows 
that the miracles stand for us on the same footing as 
any other facts of experience attested by competent 
witnesses. In daily experience we accept such facts 
whether we can explain them or not ; and when we 
can satisfy ourselves with some explanation, we do not 
ask whether the witnesses gave the same explanation. 
It is their business to tell what they have witnessed, 
and their hearers may be far more competent than 
they to find the explanation. But in the case of the 
Gospel miracles, the witnesses attempt no explanation 
beyond that which sufficed them for all facts, — they 
were wrought by the power of God. This, which is to 
us the first postulate of all being, is no explanation in 
that sense which we have in mind ; namely, such an 
understanding of particular facts as shall show their 
harmony with their surroundings. 

We therefore confront attested and surprising facts 
for which no explanation is offered. And yet the vast 
majority of minds rest here, and that whether they 
accept or reject the miracles. These, they say, are 



148 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

reported violations of the laws of nature. Therefore, 
on the one hand they are asserted to be false because 
impossible ; and on the other hand to be true, indeed, 
but capable of no explanation beyond God's will. But 
to call miracles a violation of the laws of nature, is to 
be misled by a phrase. The laws of nature are merely 
what we have observed to be the course of procedure 
in natural things ; and as observation advances, the 
conception of these laws has continually to be en- 
larged, sometimes to be widely altered. So that the 
real student of nature is slow to pronounce upon ex- 
ceptional cases, and expects to find some day that the 
law covers them too. 

With regard, therefore, to the explanation of natural 
phenomena there are three attitudes of mind. Many 
familiar facts seem of obvious explanation, so that we 
are content to accept them as matters of course, 
wholly without mystery. Other things, no less cer- 
tainly true, elude all explanation ; they recur again and 
again ; there can be no doubt of their authenticity : 
but all attempts to classify them under recognized laws 
of nature are merely hypothetical ; or sometimes a 
hypothesis can hardly be framed. The third class 
consists of all phenomena which lie between these ex- 
tremes. Their classification is attempted, but is deba- 
table ; and now they seem to approach, now to evade, 
a satisfactory explanation. But while these three atti- 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 149 

tudes of mind necessarily exist in regard to individual 
phenomena, science is rooted in the assurance that all 
nature is one, and that for every fact there are re- 
lations, however hidden, which ally it in harmony with 
all besides. Therefore, as facts accumulate and the 
unwearied study of their relations more and more 
succeeds, phenomena gradually move from the ex- 
treme of mystery into the middle-ground of plausible 
conjecture, and again into the class of things fully 
understood. At the same time, what has long been 
considered fully known, sometimes develops new and 
unexplained phases, and drops back among the half- 
known or the unaccountable. 

Now, all this is cited to urge the truth that our ac- 
ceptance of the miracles as facts has no connection 
with our power or inability to explain them. They are 
or they are not facts according to the evidence which 
authenticates them. If we think we can perfectly ex- 
plain them, they are not at all more firmly established 
thereby; and if we find them hopelessly mysterious, 
we are not therefore in the least degree absolved from 
accepting them as facts. Nor can any relation to doc- 
trine, or any place in a scheme of theology, increase or 
diminish the urgency of the evidence on which they 
rest. The truth or falsity is to stand wholly on the 
evidence adduced. And to say that no amount of 
testimony can authenticate an occurrence because it 



150 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

disagrees with our previous experience, is to arrest the 
progress of the human mind and abandon all scientific 
inquiry. 

By the force of evidence, then, we are compelled to 
accept the miraculous as unquestionably interwoven 
with the life of Jesus. But this commits us to no 
definition of the term " miraculous ; " and it is here 
used in its etymological sense of wonderful or mysteri- 
ous. It covers a group of attested facts which still lie 
at the unexplained extremity of our knowledge. But 
certain suggestions grow out of the fact that we find 
these phenomena associated with Jesus. 

The first point is, that all the miracles of the New 
Testament attach to the person of Jesus as either agent 
or object. There are, indeed, miracles attributed to 
others ; but these are the persons who received the 
work from his hands and carried it forward in his 
name. They do not merely attribute their miracles to 
the power of God, as Jews habitually did all events, 
but they expressly invoke the name of Jesus, and dis- 
claim all power without him. If we believe as these 
men did, and as Christians in all ages have believed, 
that Christ has been as really the central power of his 
Church since his death as before, we may well say that 
the miracles of the apostles were connected directly 
with him. But the apostolic miracles are few and, as 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 151 

compared with those of Jesus, unimportant. We may 
disregard them for our present purpose, and fix our 
attention on the latter. 

This association with the person and the work of 
Jesus gives the miracles of the New Testament a clear- 
ness of historic character not to be accorded to those 
of the Old. The latter lose so much of the air of his- 
tory from the uncertain authorship of the books which 
record them, from the want of precision in the narra- 
tives, and from lack of connection with any history 
otherwise authenticated, that those who credit them 
must depend rather on their inherent probability than 
on any body of testimony which might compel belief. 
And the greater part of this inherent probability, per- 
haps, is reflected back upon the Old Testament narra- 
tives from those of the New. 

The second point is, that all the miracles of Jesus 
belong to the physical world. This is essentially a 
modern view. It was not imagined, and could not 
have been understood by his contemporaries. The 
very large proportion of them which consist in curing 
neurotic diseases, were understood by those who wit- 
nessed them as an exercise of control over evil spirits, 
and therefore as outside the natural world. But mod- 
ern pathology claims all such disorders as caused by 
physical lesions, however obscure these may be. Ac- 
cordingly, we may say that the miracles of Jesus mark 



I5 2 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

his relations to the natural world. Now, we have found 
him unique in whatever relations we have studied, in 
relation to God or to man, to his teaching of wisdom 
or his conduct of life. It need not, then, surprise us to 
find him unlike other men in his relations to physical 
things. 

But in each case we have found his distinction from 
other men to involve no radical unlikeness. He does 
not differ from us as one order of animate beings dif- 
fers from another, with unsurmountable barriers ; but 
he differs from all of us, as we differ among ourselves, 
in the extension and co-ordination of faculties and 
powers. No matter how far beyond human experience 
he may appear in any particular, there is always a like 
element in other men, which might conceivably grow 
to match its fulness in Jesus. He is not on any side 
nor in any respect shut off from us by boundary lines. 
He is at the summit of development, and we tend 
towards him. Now, it grows more and more certain 
that man has rudimental powers of controlling the 
physical world which are as yet but little developed. 
Still, if the highest scientific attainments of this age 
be compared with the attitude towards nature of the 
contemporaries of Jesus, it may perhaps be judged 
that we are but little farther from being able to repro- 
duce his miracles than the men who witnessed these 
were from our achievements. 



THE GOSPEL STORY. 153 

Without pressing any such comparison, it may at 
least be said that the enormous progress of man's do- 
minion over the physical world makes room for the 
suggestion that the powers of the perfect man may 
normally extend to the instantaneous healing of dis- 
ease, and even to the resuscitation of certain of the 
dead. The view presented here — but only in the 
form of suggestion — is that the perfection of manhood 
in Jesus included as a normal part such a domination of 
the spiritual over the physical as is shown in his mira- 
cles ; and that this is so far from violating any natural 
laws, that any other man developed to equal eminence 
would possess equal powers by the very constitution of 
the world. 

This view of the miraculous in Jesus completes the 
picture of him as the perfect and supreme man ; and 
we are now prepared to take up the study of that sav- 
ing work in which he is the central figure. 



154 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



X. 

THE WORK OF CHRIST ON MAN. 

THE work of Christ upon man may be viewed from 
two sides, — the divine and the human. The first 
shows us that which his work intends for man, and the 
last, that which man experiences under its operation. 
Of course under the government of God the intent 
and the result must be the same ; and Christian think- 
ers have been led far astray by forgetting this obvious 
fact. But if this is fully remembered, we are helped 
to a clearer view of the great work by studying it in 
the two directions. 

Taking up first the divine side, we may consider the 
object, the means, and the method of Christ's work. 

The New Testament leaves us in no doubt as to the 
object at which Christ aims. God sent his Son to be 
the Saviour of the world ; that is, to effect the deliver- 
ance of men from those conditions which oppress and 
endanger their spiritual life. These may all be grouped 
as sorrow and sin. The formal thinking upon Christ's 
work deals much the more with salvation from sin ; as 
it is natural in the heat of conflict to think more of 



THE WORK OF CHRIST ON MAN 155 

victory than of peace. But when we try to grasp the 
full results of his great work, our thought is of faces 
from which all tears are wiped, and of hearts that re- 
joice. Christ the Consoler is the noblest, as he is the 
most beloved, figure in the annals of man; and God 
has given no other grace to his struggling children so 
powerful or so sweet as the privilege of knowing, when 
our hearts are burdened with the sorrows of life, 
whether our own or others', that Christ has comfort for 
us while they last, and in the end will take them all 
away. 

Jesus came also to save his people from their sins. 
This aim is never lost from sight ; nothing takes its 
place. But it is not a new aim. The later parts of 
the Old Testament avow the same intent on the part 
of God ; and the New Testament writers recognized 
that the Mosaic dispensation was given for this pur- 
pose. But they also claim that the Law was not able 
to accomplish deliverance from sin, and profess to 
teach in Christ the only way. They certainly do not 
mean by this that the Law did nothing effectual to this 
end ; nor that under the Law no men were delivered 
from sin. They are speaking of the inadequacy of the 
Law to reach all men, or to perform the perfect work of 
salvation on any man ; and they condemn it only in 
view of the exceeding breadth of God's purpose. No 
stigma is put upon the Law as related to its own time 



156 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

and office. Its work was done, and it must yield to 
more effectual means of grace. 

To comprehend this object of Christ, we must try to 
understand the full meaning of deliverance from sin as 
the New Testament teaches it. 

In hardly anything does the progressive character of 
the Bible more strikingly appear than in its concep- 
tions of sin. At first sin is disobedience to prescribed 
law ; later, it is unfaithfulness to recognized though un- 
formulated duty. But in the New Testament sin is 
always made to consist in opposition of the will to 
God. And since harmony of man with God is the 
divine purpose, sin is the one great obstacle to this 
purpose, and Christ must necessarily assume the re- 
moval of sin as the object of his mission. But we 
have seen that the will cannot fully and freely act out 
of accord with the other associate faculties of human 
nature ; and therefore the effort to harmonize the will 
with God must aim to harmonize the whole man with 
him. 

This is not obscurely stated in the New Testament, 
and it has forced itself into notice in the practical 
work of the Church ; but the studies of Christian think- 
ers have singularly wandered from this great truth, 
and have contemplated sin as something ingrafted on 
the otherwise pure nature of man by which this is held 
in bondage, and which therefore is a thing by itself, to 



THE WORK OF CHRIST OiV MAN. 157 

be separated and removed. This has reduced the 
conception of saving men to narrow and technical 
limits ; has, in fact, made it sometimes almost a me- 
chanical process. Over against this stands the plain 
teaching of the New Testament and of practical effort, 
that the salvation which Christ effects in men is a de- 
velopment of right character. What is called the 
forensic attitude of the sinner before God is a mere 
fiction of the theological imagination ; it is not taught 
in the Bible, and it does not correspond to the facts of 
life. It was introduced to the Church by the earlier 
Latin writers, and by them was borrowed from the 
jurisprudence of the Roman Empire. But God is not 
our Emperor, he is our Father ; and he deals with us 
to no other end than that we may become partakers 
of his holiness. Nor is sin a series of misdeeds, nor a 
record of past transgressions. Sin is, in its essence, 
a defect of character ; and neither man nor God can 
save the sinner in any other way than by developing 
into harmonious perfection those possibilities of his 
nature by which man bears forever the image of God. 
At whatever phase of salvation we may look, into 
whatever details our examination may lead us, this 
essential meaning is to be kept in view as the basis 
of the whole discussion. 

Christ, therefore, came to preside over the educa- 
tion of man in every department of his being. Ac- 



158 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

cordingly, we must conceive the whole body of our 
Christian civilization as being not merely a concurrent 
or subsidiary result of the Gospel, but an integral, in- 
tended, indispensable part of the work of Christ. 

Taken, therefore, in its full scope, the aim of this 
work is the salvation of the entire human race. The 
appeal is necessarily to individuals, and it is one by 
one that men must be converted ; but so close are the 
bonds of sympathy and kindred, that no man can be 
fully saved alone. Some taint must cling to him from 
his unsaved neighbor, — some defect of knowledge or 
bias of thought, some clouding or struggling of con- 
science, at least some wounded affections which will 
not let him share the peace of God. And all study of 
the operation of Christ upon single men must con- 
sciously refer to this universal solidarity of the hu- 
man race. This inseparable unity of human interests 
brings us to the first of the agencies by which Christ 
is saving the world, — human society so far as it is 
already Christianized. 

It is a commonplace to speak of the influence of 
each man's character on his associates ; and we all 
know how much this gains when many persons of sim- 
ilar disposition exert their influence in common. This 
is true of all character, but it grows in force as char- 
acter rises in excellence. In the moral world the 



THE WORK OF CHRIST ON MAN 159 

infection of health is the most powerful. Nor does 
this depend on formulated doctrines or any intellectual 
drill ; when the work is at its best, neither those who 
give nor those who take think how the process is 
carried on. It is by contact of soul with soul : " The 
life is the light of men." 

Therefore in the work of Christian missions by 
which the Gospel has been carried abroad, it has been 
found wise to establish colonies of believers, who 
should not only preach the doctrines of Christ but 
should demonstrate the Christian life to those they 
would convert. The industrial and medical education 
of missionaries, the founding of mission schools, the 
requirement of the order and decencies of civilized 
life, colleges of letters and of science, the reduction of 
savage tongues to alphabetical and literary precision, 
are not to be considered convenient adjuncts of Gospel 
work, but as much integral parts of the conversion of 
the world as catechism, or worship, or ordinances. 
And if this is true among the heathen, it is no less 
true at home. Whatever makes for the higher life 
does not merely help, but helps to constitute, the 
coming of the kingdom of righteousness. Government 
at once humane and just, wiser education, purer living, 
happier homes, less selfish business, advancing free- 
dom, science, invention, literature, art, — all these are 
constituent parts of the growing dominion of Christ. 



160 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

If we look towards the past, they are his trophies ; if 
we look towards the future, they are his means. Nor 
is this meant in some general sense, but in the strictest 
historical verity. If the key-note of science is the 
pursuit of truth without solicitude for its source or its 
consequences ; if the basis of wise politics is the 
recognition of fundamental worth and rights in man ; 
if the germ of true social order is the equal validity of 
sentiment and reason ; then are these three elements 
of high civilization traceable directly to the influence of 
the Gospel. They were, of course, not wholly unsug- 
gested before, but the Gospel first brought them into 
prominence and gave them to men. 

And this fact brings into view with extreme clear- 
ness the universality of the Gospel. There have been 
four great civilizations — the Chinese, the Indian, the 
Western Asian, and the Grasco-Roman — which pre- 
ceded the Christian by many centuries, and each of 
which has embraced, perhaps, an equally great popu- 
lation. But ours alone is built upon a demonstrable 
principle which has presided over its organization and 
characterizes all its parts. So that with all its com- 
plexity the Christian civilization, in whatever lands, 
has peculiarities which the dullest know at sight, and 
which sharply distinguish it from all others, ancient or 
modern. And these peculiarities are traceable to the 
constant influence of the Gospel upon its origin and 



THE WORK OF CHRIST ON MAN. 161 

growth. One of these is that which is called upon the 
business side enterprise, and on the religious side the 
missionary spirit. By virtue of this the Christian 
civilization has pushed its way over all the earth. It 
brings its own peculiarities into contact with all other 
social conditions, asserts its own superiority, and in 
the end has never failed to make good the assertion. 
In this way the daughter of the Gospel has forced the 
Gospel — often sadly disfigured — upon the attention 
of all mankind ; and in spite of the unworthy lives 
which have misrepresented it, the Christian civilization 
has won the respect and roused the imitation of all 
men, civilized or savage. And ample experience 
proves that where the daughter has found entrance, 
the mother can in time make good her footing, and 
establish her sway. 

To omit, therefore, any element of civil enlighten- 
ment from the list of agencies by which Christ is 
bringing the world to God, would be a fatal narrowness 
of view. Nor are we to be disturbed because with all 
that is good in these things there is mixed so much 
that is wrong. The very process of salvation consists 
in the interpenetration of the good into the midst of the 
evil. No numerical computation can at any stage be 
made of the extent to which the world is already 
saved ; for, as we have seen, no man can be wholly in 



1 62 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

harmony with God till all are reached; and in com- 
munities and individuals the tares and the wheat must 
grow together. The true illustration of the process, 
however, is the parable of the leaven, in which no part 
is ready for the baking till the whole mass is raised. 
Instead, therefore, of mourning the weakness and evil 
that still impair what is best among men, we are to 
reverse the point of view. We are to rejoice that 
through all the evil and weakness of the world, a 
gigantic mass, the beginnings of better things are so 
mingled, that in contact with every wrong lies some- 
thing right; and that the work of Christ, evident in 
these beginnings, is mighty and must prevail. 



THE CHURCH 163 



XI. 

THE CHURCH. 

THE consideration of the Church, the next of 
Christ's agencies, grows directly out of what has 
preceded. For we must carefully avoid any view of 
the Church which marks it off from the world. This is 
the scholastic view, and finds no verification in experi- 
ence. Whatever efforts have been made to segregate 
the disciples from the world have necessarily failed. 
Even when a physical separation has been attempted, 
it has been found necessary to retain connecting links 
with human society ; and to whatever extent the sepa- 
ration was effected, to that extent the spiritual life of 
the votaries grew childish and formal, a futile struggle 
with imaginary difficulties. But these are quite excep- 
tional cases. In general, the members of the Church 
have of necessity remained members of the civil com- 
munity. It has been impossible to draw any line 
which should separate their duties, their fortunes, their 
social relations as Christians, from those they sustained 
as citizens. Almost everywhere theory has aimed at 
this separation and professed it ; almost nowhere have 
the keen eyes of onlookers been able to see it. 



164 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

And what experience has found is exactly what our 
studies would lead us to expect. Since the daily life 
of man is God's ordinary medium of communication, 
and since all that is already won to him or tending 
towards him is commissioned to act upon the evil with 
which it is necessarily in contact, the Church cannot 
be, and ought not to be, set apart from this allied field 
of activity. For the Church is the focal point at which 
combine all those persons and agencies that are con- 
sciously bent upon serving God and drawing men to 
him. It is Christ's institution. And institutions are 
but organized forms of combined effort. What, there- 
fore, the scattered agencies of good in the world are 
doing under Christ's hand, with little consciousness 
of his leading, the Church sets herself to do with full 
intent. To the augmented power of many acting to- 
gether, she adds the re-enforcement of careful prepara- 
tion, and the wise co-ordination and distribution of 
work. 

But far deeper than this is the fact that every insti- 
tution has some fundamental principle out of which all 
its life and work proceed. And the basic principle of 
the Church is the consciousness of Christian brother- 
hood. 

When the disciples assembled in secrecy and in fear 
after the death of Jesus, it was because their terrible 
loss made them more necessary to each other ; and at 



THE CHURCH. 165 

the same time their common religious faith united 
them in prayer. And here appeared that which in all 
its history has been the vital centre of the Church, out 
of which all its life has flowed, — the common worship 
of the Christian brotherhood. The Church has wan- 
dered wide and far, has partaken in every degree of 
worldly frailty, has found her duty and her pleasure in 
a thousand varying forms, but she has never ceased to 
hold as the first of her functions the common worship 
of the brethren. 

Like all that belongs to the Gospel, this had already 
been suggested. The Synagogue was the forerunner 
of the Church. The assembled Christians came pres- 
ently to recognize themselves as the people of God. 
At first they did not wholly break away from their 
Jewish preconceptions ; but after a little the conscious- 
ness was born that Christ had widened the narrowness 
of Moses to embrace all who would believe. And two 
generations had not passed before the conviction was 
fixed in the Church that she was on the one hand the 
seed of Abraham's faith and heir of the promises, while 
on the other hand, all barriers were levelled, and who- 
soever would might take of the water of life freely. 
The universal religion being come, the universal organ- 
ization was begun. 

We are not here concerned to trace the countless 
forms which the Church has assumed. No one of 



1 66 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

them has the special warrant of the New Testament, 
though all have claimed it. The fact is, that the 
Church has very largely taken her structure in every 
age from the circumstances of social life surrounding 
her, and especially from the civil government under 
which she lived. Her history covers the entire scale, 
from the purest democracy to the strictest monarchy. 
But however great the influence of these forms, they 
have still been superficial and transient, while the per- 
manent and all-animating vitality which made them 
possible and used them, flowed always from the hearts 
of God's people blended in worship. 

It is of the essence of the Gospel that the Church 
should seek for more than her own edification ; she 
has special duties, and the first was laid upon her by 
definite command of her risen Lord. It was the diffu- 
sion of the Gospel. Methods and order were left to 
the wisdom of the faithful and the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit ; but somehow, and constantly, the good 
news which they held as stewards must be spread 
abroad. It is not necessary to insist that this is an 
ineradicable first principle of Gospel work. The 
Church has never under any form or any corruption, 
lost sight of it or long neglected it ; and the nineteenth 
century has seen efforts and successes in this field 
which only the first century has surpassed. 



THE CHURCH. 167 

Beyond this no specific command was laid upon the 
Church, but her work promptly developed in two other 
directions. The first was a supervision of the chari- 
ties of believers. We do not read that pressure was 
needed to urge the brethren to this duty. The only 
word concerns the disposal of that which was given 
as of course. Indeed, it is to be noticed that Jesus, 
in this as in many other things, relied on the sure 
response of the human heart when once it should 
be touched by his Spirit. He teaches charity, and 
he practised it on the most splendid scale ; but he 
does not discourse of it as something new or difficult. 
He has no conception that a man can love God with- 
out loving his brother also. And the centuries have 
justified his confidence. The Church at times has 
been stained with wantonness and greed, but she has 
never ceased to profess, and somehow to practise, the 
duty of organized charity. 

A third function which the Church early assumed 
and has ever since asserted, grew out of an equal zeal, 
but not according to knowledge. It was the function 
of discipline, and was addressed at first to morals. 
When it had come to be perceived that the Gospel 
was equally the heritage of the gentiles, a great danger 
arose that the Church might split into Grecian and 
Jewish factions on the question of ceremonial observ- 
ances. The apostles, therefore, as recognized heads 



1 68 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

of the organization, formulated a minimum of require- 
ments which they hoped would keep the gentiles from 
wholly outraging the sensibilities of their Jewish breth- 
ren, and, at the same time, relieve the former of the 
heavy yoke of the Law. 

It cannot be said that the effort was successful. 
The division persisted so long as there continued to be 
Christians of Jewish education. Of the four require- 
ments, two, abstention from things strangled and from 
blood, are no more heard of, and nobody dreams of 
their being obligatory upon Christians. The avoid- 
ance of meats offered to idols might, it would seem, 
have been left where St. Paul puts it, — with the con- 
science and good sense of believers. And chastity is 
so little amenable to compulsion, and so native to the 
Christian animus, that the amazing victory which the 
Gospel has won in its behalf is to be traced wholly to 
the Christian conscience, and not at all to ecclesiasti- 
cal constraint. Indeed, it is instructive to notice that 
the times and lands in which the Church has devel- 
oped the greatest power of compulsive discipline have, 
with few exceptions, been those in which chastity has 
been least respected. And a review of all ages would 
show the same facts, for outward compulsion is alien 
to the spirit of the Gospel. If we look at those in- 
structions of Christ which are appealed to as the war- 
rant for ecclesiastical discipline, we find nothing which 



THE CHURCH 169 

deserves this name. On the contrary, we find direc- 
tions to deal patiently with one who has by his acts 
renounced the brotherhood, and if he persevere in his 
renouncement, to let him go. 

With analogous purpose the Church has attempted a 
discipline of belief. The circumstances of the first 
age hardly suggested this. The few traces of it in the 
writings of St. Paul are rather the earnest remon- 
strances of a brother than the commands of a prelate. 
But as soon as active minds began to reduce the belief 
of Christians to formulas, they of course differed, 
and those in authority, solicitous for the continued 
purity of the faith, promulgated creeds and denounced 
heresies. 

It is needless to recount the long warfare of the 
creeds. The manner and spirit of it have been for the 
most part unchristian and disastrous. Looking back 
on some of the bitterest struggles, a modern Christian 
can see no choice between the contestants. Nor can 
we now admit that it is a legitimate office of the 
Church to prescribe tenets of belief. The common 
source of belief to all Christians must be the teaching 
of Christ's word and life as they are recorded in the 
New Testament ; and the office of learning and decid- 
ing what is there taught belongs to each man for him- 
self. Under such a law of liberty there will always be 
many different interpretations of the Gospel, and men 



170 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

will naturally group themselves according to these 
views, as did the Jewish and the gentile believers of 
the initial Church. We need only to remember that 
since these differences of belief are clearly within the 
rights of those who hold them, they make no infrac- 
tion of the bond of brotherhood ; so that while the 
churches must always be many and various, the 
Church is one, and the fruits of the Spirit are its only 
tests of membership. But alike to the churches and 
the Church must ever be denied the right so long as- 
serted, of prescribing under compulsion the belief of 
Christians. 

But those who enjoy the theological freedom of our 
day should no more imagine that their privileges could 
have been won without the struggles of the past, than 
should the heirs of civil liberty. The warfare of the 
creeds has been in tumult, and with garments rolled in 
blood ; but this was the stern condition of evils to be 
conquered, and not otherwise could the large thought 
of to-day have found place. 

A fourth great division of the Church's work has 
gradually grown into prominence, that of instruction. 
Of course the diffusion of the Gospel always implied 
instruction for new hearers, and crises would at times 
occur when further teaching was needed ; but the 
apostolic conception was so simple that no elaborate 
provision for sustained instruction seems to have been 



THE CHURCH. 171 

thought necessary. The next centuries developed the 
sermon, and careful teaching for the young ; but as the 
darkness of the Middle Ages shut in, this function 
fell into neglect, or was so perverted as to frustrate 
its original purpose. With the intellectual revival and 
the Reformation, the first place was given among Prot- 
estants, and an important one among Catholics, to 
elaborate sermons ; and more recently the Sunday- 
school, the prayer-meeting, the class-meeting, and other 
customs have grown into use. 

Now, all that we need here notice is, that, while 
instruction must necessarily be a function of the 
Church as long as any are uninstructed, none of these 
forms of instruction are essential. They are the out- 
come of the Christian sense under special circum- 
stances ; and if altered conditions shall suggest other 
methods as better, or if any group of Christians shall 
come to exist who need no formal instruction, and 
who dispense with it, neither the validity nor the use- 
fulness of the Church can suffer thereby. 

This would be the place, if there were occasion, to 
discuss ecclesiastical organization, worship, and the 
sacraments. But our conception relegates all these to 
subordinate places. As has been said, no form of 
organization is prescribed in the New Testament. No 
such form has been or could possibly be permanent, 
because the growth which is essential to everything 



172 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

human would be impossible with unvarying modes of 
expression. By retaining old names in new meanings 
an appearance of permanence has been given to 
ecclesiastical institutions ; but, when the significance 
of these is studied historically, it is found that succes- 
sive generations have so differently understood things 
called by the same name, that the permanence is 
merely nominal. As in all other fields, the church 
which lives grows ; and a growing church surrounded 
by a growing community must, as a condition of its 
growth, remain always at liberty to revise or change 
the methods and processes which express its life. All 
forms of ecclesiastical organization, therefore, whether 
for worship or for work, must be the free outgrowth of 
the spiritual and social conditions to which they have 
relation. 

As regards the sacraments, it is startling to contrast 
the enormous importance which the Church has at- 
tached to them, with the simplicity of their appearance 
in the New Testament. A symbol borrowed to give 
visible expression to the penitence of converts, and a 
farewell supper touched with the tenderest pathos of 
remembrance, have been fashioned into ecclesiastical 
machinery which should move the gates of heaven and 
of hell. That which is of the greatest importance con- 
cerning them is that they be restored to their primitive 
simplicity of meaning. So far as Christian souls can 



THE CHURCH. 173 

find in them helpful suggestion and spiritual quicken- 
ing, they may be fitly classed among the minor agen- 
cies of the Church ; but they are far from taking rank 
with instruction, or work, or prayer. 

To gather now into one conception the result of 
these studies, we find the Church to be essentially the 
Christian brotherhood ; habitually assembled for wor- 
ship in such groups as may be practicable ; organized 
to carry on the work of the Lord under whatever con- 
stitution, and by whatever methods, its own judgment 
may at each period prefer ; striving to spread the Gos- 
pel, to succor the needy, to preach righteousness, to 
proclaim the truth, and, by all these means, itself to 
grow in grace. 



174 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



XII. 

THE BIBLE. 



TO the next of the agencies of Christ, the Bible, we 
have already given some study. It will be ne- 
cessary here to combine a brief recapitulation with some 
additional considerations. 

The Bible, we found, although composed of many 
writings, constitutes a unity, and has, as a whole, an 
impressive history of many centuries. Around it have 
gathered the best thinking and the best living of man- 
kind. It is not, therefore, to be judged de novo by the 
standards of one age, much less of one school or indi- 
vidual; but in any judgment passed upon it, all the 
facts of its prolonged influence and its wide acceptance 
are to be accounted for. 

The Bible, too, is a book of daily human life. It 
was not a scholastic production ; it does not deal in 
abstractions or theories ; it never departs very far, and 
seldom at all, from that instruction which their daily 
experience offers to men. The tests of the Bible, there- 
fore, are not to be applied in the closet ; but it must 
be judged according to the results of its use by com- 
mon men under familiar circumstances. And this is 
emphasized by the fact that all sorts and conditions of 



THE BIBLE. 175 

men have, in every age in which they have had access 
to it, found that the Bible has a special word for each 
of them. No result of its study tends more to exalt 
our reverence for the Bible than this fact. When the 
search for systems of doctrine is dropped, and its pages 
are read under the pressure of daily concerns for daily 
guidance, it is always found that this book contains 
some word of comfort, of teaching, reproof, correction, 
instruction in righteousness, which satisfies the seeker. 
Nor does the purport of that which each man thus 
finds for himself differ greatly from the results of his 
neighbor's search. 

Now, in the light of these considerations we may 
ask, what is the authority of the Bible ? On what does 
its authority rest, and what is its extent, whether in 
force or scope ? We have found that the highest 
authority for each man at any crisis is the decision of 
his own conscience, guided by all the light it receives 
from every source. Therefore, the deepest impression 
of authority residing in the Bible is received when con- 
science seizes upon its utterances and urges them as 
obligatory ; or when the troubled soul finds in them 
peace and rest. But since the same thing would be 
true of any word from any source which might give the 
same impressions, while a special objective authority- 
is customarily claimed for the Bible, our question calls 
for an answer from this point of view. 



176 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

All that we can infer from the history of its use con- 
firms the conclusion reached by studying its origin ; 
namely, the Bible commands our respect because it 
summarizes the wisdom which God teaches to men 
through the experience of life. It was produced by a 
long succession of men, eminent at once for their 
familiarity with the things of the Spirit, and for the 
highest success in the conduct of life. And what 
these men produced has received the indorsement of 
the people of God, age after age. 

Scholastic theology, to be sure, has been far from 
resting in any such conclusion. The earliest dogma- 
tizing period of the Church was led by many influences 
to set the kingdom of God over against the world as an 
antagonist ; it even seemed to find warrant for this in 
the words of Christ ; and this made it necessary to 
conceive a channel of divine authority wholly inde- 
pendent of daily life. It was therefore asserted that 
God impressed his truth directly upon the minds of 
those whom he chose as his mouthpieces, by some 
psychological process peculiar to this operation ; and 
that the message of such men, whether spoken or 
written, whether in their own age or at any subsequent 
time, was for this reason to be received as the direct 
and authoritative word of God, without the least need 
of confirmation from temporal affairs. And different 
branches of the Church have located this authority 



THE BIBLE. 177 

either in the apostles and their alleged successors, or 
in the writers of the Bible. 

Now we shall see, when we come to study the Holy 
Spirit, that a direct divine influence upon the spiritual 
nature of individuals must be accepted as an occasional 
fact of experience ; and we shall presently consider 
how far this may be thought to have taken part in the 
production of the Bible. But what concerns us at this 
moment is that no such supposition can so authenticate 
God's word in the Bible as to remove the need of veri- 
fication by the conscience. No authority thus derived 
can have any objective force ; for if God has thus 
spoken to a man, other men can know it, aside from 
some external sanction, only by the man's own report. 
And the history of mankind has such a lamentable 
record of self-delusion and fraud under this head, that 
the assertion counts for nothing, with judicious minds, 
until it is confirmed either by the proved character of 
the claimant, or by the judgment of others upon his 
message, or by both. 

But the need of this authentication is exactly what 
the theory seeks to avoid ; and to escape the difficulty, 
confirmation has been sought from a special series 
of occurrences in the material field, called miracles. 
These, it has been alleged, being wholly aside from the 
usual experience of men, and yet intimately connected 
with human life, give just the witness needed of divine 



178 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

communication through special channels. We have 
already studied the subject of miracles, but it may be 
added that the miraculous attestation of divine revela- 
tion has now lost its force with intelligent minds. As 
phenomena, the occurrences may indeed be established, 
but this by no means establishes for them a claim to be 
considered special instances of divine interference. In- 
deed, the high development of mind necessary to 
determine whether given events are, or are not, within 
the normal range of man's experience, finds itself so 
able to estimate upon other grounds the claims of any 
asserted revelation, that miracles become, for this pur- 
pose, superfluous. In other words, the miraculous can 
only authenticate a divine revelation for those minds 
which are incompetent to judge either of the revelation 
or of the miracle. 

But even when the miracles are no longer urged as 
the warrant of the Bible, it is still claimed that the 
book is itself a miracle, because it owes its origin to a 
special divine interference with the action of the 
writers' minds, namely, inspiration. As has been said, 
such a divine participation in the production of the 
Bible may well have occurred, and we must, therefore, 
study the subject of inspiration. And it will illuminate 
the whole subject if we begin by distinguishing be- 
tween the facts of inspiration, and the theories which 
seek to explain it. 



THE BIBLE. 179 

The facts may be stated as follows : For three thou- 
sand years there has been a portion of the human race 
who may be called the People of God, because, of 
whatever race or culture, they have always excelled 
their contemporaries in the power of so apprehending 
spiritual things as to apply them with success to the 
conduct of life. That is to say, the people of God 
have always been, for their time, experts in spiritual 
things. Now, these experts, through all their three 
thousand years, have agreed in declaring that parts or 
the whole of the Bible differ from all other literature ; 
that the difference consists in peculiar fitness for min- 
istering to the spiritual needs of men ; and that this 
difference was caused by a special participation of God 
in the production of these writings. These three ideas 
combined constitute the meaning of inspiration as ap- 
plied to the Bible ; and the consenting judgment of so 
many experts establishes such biblical inspiration as 
a fact. 

It may indeed be freely granted that much of this 
consensus has been merely acquiescence in the opinion 
of others, that comparatively little of it has been based 
on critical study, and that, however real each man's 
consciousness may make it for him, it can be pre- 
sented to others only as opinion. But the foundations 
of the most important human interests rest on no other 
ground. It is such long continued harmony of judg- 



l8o THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

merit, even of uncritical judgment, on which rest the 
primary postulates of ethics, the most valued axioms 
of political organization, and some of the canons of 
art. So that it is no more an assumption to say that 
the Bible is inspired, than to claim that children owe 
obedience to parents, or that the citizen is entitled to 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the face 
of such authority the adverse opinion of an individual 
or a group no more invalidates the postulate of inspi- 
ration than it would the political or the ethical. 

But when we have asserted inspiration as a fact, 
many questions still remain open upon which there 
has been no general agreement among the people of 
God, and the answers to which constitute the various 
theories of inspiration. These mainly seek to an- 
swer the two questions, to what extent, and by what 
process, did the divine participation take place ? But 
we shall, perhaps, best reach such an understanding of 
the subject as our purpose requires, if we do not 
attempt to keep the two questions distinct, but pro- 
ceed by a course of inquiry different from that which 
is usual. For it is customary to attempt the psycho- 
logical analysis of the mind's action under inspiration, 
and to seek the exact method of contact between the 
human and the divine. But this is necessarily specu- 
lative, since no man who is generally credited with 
inspiration has left an account of his inspired mood. 



THE BIBLE. 181 

The surer way seems to be to examine the inspired 
writings, and discover in what particulars they differ 
from analogous writings for which inspiration is not 
claimed ; and then to ascertain, if we can, what modi- 
fication of well-known faculties would be necessary to 
produce these differences. If we find modifications 
needed, and can guess by what mode of divine action 
they might be effected, this will bring us to the position 
of the psychologists, but with the advantage of much 
preliminary information. If, on the other hand, a dif- 
ferent conclusion is reached, the whole subject will be 
much simplified. 

Inspiration, if we take the word in its broadest sense, 
has been held to affect the deliverances of the biblical 
writers, as regards, on the one hand, man's external, 
and on the other, his spiritual, concerns. The former 
field includes the announcement of a moral law, and 
unerring accuracy in the statement of events, whether 
historical or prophetic. The latter comprises the ex- 
pression of spiritual experiences, and the revelation of 
theological truth. We must consider these four topics 
in the order named. 

We have already studied the process by which the 
moral law of the Bible came gradually to exist, gathered 
from special experiences of life by the consciences of 
special men, and approved amid all the circumstances 



182 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

of the general life of God's people by the general con- 
science. It is therefore the law of God who ordered 
the life out of which it was learned, and gave their 
native qualifications to the men who formulated it. 
No doctrine of a peculiar, transient influence can add 
anything to the divineness of such an origin. 

The second claim for inspiration is that of unerring 
accuracy in the statement of events, whether past or 
future. As regards history, the test of this claim — 
which is nowhere made in the Bible — lies with the 
science of historical criticism, to which this book is, of 
course, as amenable as any other. And the results of 
such testing seem to be that, while the historical parts 
of the Bible are certainly not without errors, yet they 
contain history of a very high order, both for accuracy 
of statement and clearness of presentation. Indeed, 
if each book be judged by the best of other historical 
compositions contemporaneous with it, the Bible will, 
in every case, be found to equal, if not to excel, its 
rivals. If any reservation must be made, it is only 
in the matter of literary style, and that only in the 
New Testament. All this indicates minds of the first 
order in the authors, but it calls for no special divine 
impulse. 

Perhaps it is for the prediction of coming events 
that inspiration has been most confidently claimed ; 
and here again historical criticism must largely de- 



THE BIBLE. 183 

cide, for both the utterance and the fulfilment of the 
prophecies now fall within the historic field. Much 
labor has been spent upon this subject, but it does 
not appear that any perfectly unbiassed survey of the 
whole field of biblical prophecy has yet been made. 
Some tendency to magnify or to belittle seems always 
present. It appears not certain that we can point to 
any prophecy concerning temporal affairs, which can 
be proved to have been uttered before the event, and 
equally proved to have been fulfilled in the true sense 
of the prediction, and which goes beyond that power 
of foresight sometimes possessed by exalted and ex- 
perienced minds. Remarkable instances of this power 
are recorded of statesmen and men of affairs here and 
there in all history ; and if it shall finally prove that 
some biblical predictions transcend any other in- 
stances of this forecast, this will seem to imply an 
exaltation of known human power, rather than any 
exceptional relation of man to God. It does not ap- 
pear, therefore, that in the domain of temporal affairs 
we need ascribe to the Bible what the Bible does not 
claim for itself, a divine influence different from that 
by which God governs our daily life. 

When we turn to spiritual matters the case is some- 
what different ; for the Bible is our spiritual book, and 
is meant to express concisely and with emphasis that 
which is diffused less perceptibly through daily life. 



1 84 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

The first point under this division is the expression of 
spiritual experience. It is the unanimous verdict of 
all who have known this book well, through two thou- 
sand years, that the human race nowhere possesses 
such adequate expression of all spiritual states as the 
Bible offers. Through all changes of theology and 
church order, despite differences of government, of 
language, and of race, still psalmist and prophet, be- 
atitudes and parables, have helped the heart to utter 
its emotions, and brought peace to the sinner and com- 
fort to the suffering. That the spirit of God breathes 
through such words needs no urging and no proof. 
They are spirit and they are life. But it is to be no- 
ticed that in every instance they were allied in their 
origin, and they are allied in their effects, with the 
familar life of man. They are no closet songs, no 
floating voices of the air. Heart speaks to heart ; and 
since the spirit of God is thus poured through one 
heart to another, this is surely inspiration. And yet it 
does not depart, except by its greatness, from the 
daily ministrations of Christian brotherhood. One is 
more tempted, therefore, to pronounce inspiration the 
universal prerogative of godly souls, than to attribute 
this power of the Bible to a special gift. 

There remains, as the last point, the revelation of 
theological truth. Of this much the same may be said 
as of the previous point. Whatever truly noble con- 



THE BIBLE. 185 

ceptions of spiritual facts, or privileges, or hopes, pre- 
vail among men, have been either wholly derived from, 
or largely improved by, the Bible. Very much which 
calls itself the result of philosophical study or of ethi- 
cal experience is but a graft cut from this tree. But 
in the Bible these conceptions are not delivered in 
theological form ; and the gravest errors have arisen 
from assuming that they were. In every instance the 
writer's impulse comes from his own or another's ex- 
perience. These utterances are the outcry of souls 
profoundly acquainted with God, and wrought upon 
by the pressure of life till they saw with open vision 
the meaning of his dealings with the sons of men. 
But this experience is not confined to the biblical 
writers. In all ages there are men who live in such 
constant apprehension of the divine presence, that in 
extreme moments some truth of God flashes across the 
mind, self-authenticating and absolute. The ready 
accord which the people of God gives to these words, 
once uttered, marks them as divine truth ; and it is 
this, repeated generation after generation, which has 
assured to the chief of them their place in the Bible, 
and certified them as the oracles of God. 

Now, this survey seems to show that all the factors 
of the inspirational act are otherwise known to us. 
They consist of human powers more or less familiarly 



1 86 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

exercised in ordinary life, and of a certain divine im- 
pulse communicated to these powers, which is not 
unknown in our personal experience. That is to say, 
every element of the complex process of inspiration 
exists in normal activity among men at all times. So 
that, if it were the will of God to give us to-morrow 
new psalms or a new epistle to the churches, of equal 
validity with the old, we should not be conscious of 
anything exceptional in the process by which these 
would be produced ; and the new scripture could as- 
sume its place with the old ones and share their au- 
thority, by no other sanction than the recognition of 
the people of God, who are for such an office as com- 
petent to-day as they were in the earliest Christian 
centuries. And this brings us back to the only trust- 
worthy sanction of the inspiration and authority of 
the Bible : that utterance, namely, is for • any man in- 
spired which brings him into more conscious harmony 
with God ; and that is inspired for the human race 
which long and manifold experience among the people 
of God has shown to have persistently this effect. 

We should not pass from this topic without remark- 
ing that this view in no degree lessens our reverence 
for the divine element in the Bible, but rather in- 
creases it. The status of the book, as has been be- 
fore insisted, rests on no theory of its origin, but on 
its long record of usefulness and power ; and if such 



THE BIBLE, 187 

a book, instead of being an exceptional production, 
is a co-ordinate part of that great result which God is 
working out through all the life of man, then it takes 
rank among the greatest of his works, and is marvel- 
lous in our eyes. 

Now, if we ask, in the light of these considerations, 
how the Bible is to be used, we shall find the way open 
to satisfactory conclusions. We are to learn from the 
Bible what we can of that wisdom which God forever 
suggests through the experience of life. It is mingled 
with all life in all lands and times ; but we have here 
what men, specially qualified to perceive it, under 
specially suggestive circumstances, and with a special 
impulse for teaching, have learned and recorded. 
And we are taught by the experience of many ages, 
that in this study we shall again and again find con- 
science quickened and enlightened by some word 
which it will know to be divine ; or sorrow healed by 
a promise which visibly expresses the love of God. 
As in all other fields of research, these lessons of the 
book can only be well understood when confronted, 
by each scholar, with actual facts analogous to those 
from which the lessons were drawn. So used, present 
facts and recorded observations illustrate each other, 
and the scholar not only comes to grasp the full mean- 
ing of the teacher, but may sometimes go beyond the 
teacher's wisdom. 



155 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

Of course the beginning of any exhaustive study of 
this kind, is to know exactly what the pages before 
us mean to say. It is undoubtedly true of the bibli- 
cal writers, as of all other thinkers or seers, that their 
words often suggest to the mind of the reader more 
than was in the writer's mind. All good thinking or 
perceiving is an opening of doors. But it is merely 
dreaming over the page to catch floating suggestions 
without carefully studying the writer's meaning. A 
book which has so impressive a history of influence 
deserves our closest attention ; and any neglect, not to 
say obstruction, of any study which may throw light 
upon the meaning of the biblical writers, is clear evi- 
dence that the divine claims of the book are not 
appreciated. 

The most mischievous form which this error has 
taken is the setting up of views which the men of one 
age have drawn from the study of the Bible, as final 
and conclusive for those who follow. For this denies 
a characteristic which gives the Bible one of its strong- 
est claims to be a revelation for all men, namely, its 
power of progressive instruction. As we have seen, 
the efficiency of a revelation depends upon the capa- 
city of those who receive to understand it. And as the 
human mind cannot rest at a fixed point ; but is al- 
ways, under the tuition of experience, becoming more 
or differently capable of understanding the meaning of 



THE BIBLE. 189 

things, a universal revelation must express fundamen- 
tal truth in such a way that men at different stages of 
advance can learn from it all the truth of which they 
are at each stage capable. Now, the Bible has always 
been admired for its power of thus meeting every 
grade of individual life, from the sage to the peasant ; 
and the fact cannot be ignored that the highest range 
of human capacity rises through many gradations as 
the centuries pass, and has an analogous need to find 
for itself at each stage the meaning of God. To fear 
or to prove that the Bible cannot endure this test, 
would be fear or proof that it is not a universal reve- 
lation. 

But while the most learned of every Christian age 
have found use for all their learning in the study of 
the Bible, and while those who undertake the instruc- 
tion of others have an obligation to let nothing escape 
them that is attainable, yet the first object of this 
study for each man is to learn what God has to say 
to him ; and the key to such learning lies in his own 
daily life. To this test learned and simple alike must 
bring all their conclusions for verification. A yoke 
which neither we nor our fathers could bear is not the 
yoke of Christ, however it may seem deduced from his 
words. Doctrines which make difficult the way of 
daily duty, or sadden more than life itself saddens 
the heart of the compassionate, are not of that Spirit 



190 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

whose fruits include joy and peace. And no biblical 
study, however it may have exhausted the attainments 
of scholarship, has mastered God's word to men if it 
does not further in their lives the peaceable fruits 
of righteousness. 

So studied, and with the results of its study so veri- 
fied, the Bible becomes the greatest, with one excep- 
tion, of the agencies of Christ. The greatest of all, 
which we have next to study, is the Holy Spirit. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, 191 



XIII. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

THE biblical doctrine of the Holy Spirit cannot be 
learned simply by reading the passages in which 
this phrase occurs. There are allied expressions — 
the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit 
of Christ, or simply the Spirit — which are so often 
obviously interchangeable as to assure us that they 
represent the same fundamental conception. At first, 
however, we seem to find rather a multitude of allied 
meanings than any one which is constant. But when 
we have eliminated a class of passages in which the 
words merely go to form a periphrasis for some more 
familiar expression, we find three important phases 
of meaning which run with varying emphasis through 
the whole Bible. First, the Holy Spirit is a synonym 
for the name of God. This is far more usual in the 
Old Testament, but several New Testament passages 
admit no other meaning. Second, a certain attitude 
or disposition of man's spiritual nature is meant. This 
is hardly emphasized in the Old Testament; but in 
the New the Holy Spirit in this sense becomes a stand- 
ard and most important expression. Third, the vari- 



192 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

ous phrases very often mean that divine influence by 
which God induces in man harmony with Himself. 
This is hardly more than suggested in the Old Testa- 
ment, but it is the ruling idea of the New. 

Now, a little study will convince us that these are 
rather shades of meaning than differences. While 
each text separately may belong more to one than 
another group, yet a wider survey shows them all 
blending, so that hardly any passage falls under one 
definition so markedly as to exclude all trace of the 
others. This is not confusion of thought, but profu- 
sion. For spiritual processes cannot be stated with the 
precision of mathematics ; we can express them only 
in terms of their phenomena; and as these phenom- 
ena are continually varying under changed condi- 
tions, an elastic word, while it adapts itself to the 
phenomenal variations, at the same time holds steadily 
before the mind the fundamental meaning which un- 
derlies all changes of application. This is the use of 
terms which daily life forces upon men ; and this, 
therefore, is the usage of the book of daily life. We 
have, then, various shades of meaning susceptible of a 
threefold grouping, but all underlain by one compre- 
hensive thought ; and this fundamental thought is the 
essential biblical meaning of the Holy Spirit. We 
must now attempt to get clearly before our minds this 
basic and all-determining conception ; and we shall 



THE HOLY SPIRIT. 193 

find the key to it in what we have already learned of 
the nature of Christ's work. 

We have seen, namely, that the aim of his effort was 
to bring home to the minds of men the essential spirit- 
uality of their life ; to demonstrate that the things of 
the flesh are trivial and weak when compared with 
the power of the spirit ; that our visible living is but a 
series of transient phenomena through which our souls 
express themselves and are educated ; so that the fur- 
thering of this education is the only worthy object of 
living, and its attainment the only durable possession. 
Now, this is done by God's perpetual superintendence 
of our lives. Every experience is a lesson set us, and 
for every new need of our souls, life brings its appro- 
priate teaching. Nor are we merely subjected to these 
influences of external things and left to the result ; it 
is most clearly taught that God's presence pervades 
and dominates all that we undergo, so that he does 
not so much send worldly experiences to teach us, as 
himself teach us through them. 

But we become aware, in the course of our lives, 
that the progress of our spiritual education cannot 
be wholly accounted for by the tangible elements of 
life. There come at times sudden insight, augmented 
strength, new groupings of our spiritual acquirements 
to which the outer conditions do not seem to give rise. 
And yet' these so harmonize with what we have other- 



194 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

wise learned, so admirably connect the tangible past 
with the equally tangible future, that we must believe 
them to be given by the same superintendence which 
makes our outward life an education of the soul. God 
is not limited in his influence upon our souls to the 
mediation of material things ; but to this he adds, as 
he finds it needful, his immediate touch. Yet he pre- 
serves a perfect consistency in the whole process, 
because, whether mediate or immediate, it is always 
his contact with the soul which effects our training. 

But parallel with this commerce between God and 
each soul, runs the interaction of souls with each other. 
Many occurrences indicate a communication of spir- 
itual conditions from man to man by hidden channels. 
History has instances so widespread as to cover com- 
munities, and even nations, in which some epidemic of 
patriotism, of superstition, of panic, has mysteriously 
seized the multitude and swept all before it. And on 
a smaller scale every one's experience has offered sim- 
ilar phenomenon. In their nobler aspects they consti- 
tute the silent effect upon a group of persons which 
flows, we know not how, out of a single noble charac- 
ter, a school, a church, imperceptibly filling the moral 
atmosphere with, purity and zeal. These allusions may 
suffice to suggest the larger idea of a spiritual affinity 
among all men, underlying the more familiar experi- 
ences of life ; and this comes vividly to sight in the 



THE HOLY SPIRIT. 195 

history of the earliest Gospel propagation, gathering 
multitudes into one brotherhood, reaching from land 
to land> constituting the Church almost on the instant 
a notable phenomenon, and in a few generations 
making it the greatest organized power in the world. 
This was always called the work of the Holy Spirit, 
and it was attributed to the energy of Christ flowing 
through his followers. 

Now, we cannot suppose this communion of godly 
souls to have been completely in abeyance before 
Christ came ; but the conditions of a large unity were 
wanting, and especially there was no central principle 
or person to form the vitalizing nucleus of such an 
aggregate. The distinctive characteristic of Christ's 
work was that he became at once the controlling head 
of spiritual unity among men. By this is meant noth- 
ing mystical, although it is something remote from the 
apprehension of the senses. It is meant that Jesus 
Christ, a living spiritual person, began, during his vis- 
ible life, to exercise, and has exercised ever since, a 
dominant influence over the hearts of those who trust 
in him ; that this influence draws like-minded souls as 
well towards each other as to him ; and that it results 
in a perpetual and spreading epidemic of enthusiasm 
and righteousness. 

Now, this process is a more advanced stage of that 
work which we have seen God to be conducting upon 



196 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

the spirits of all flesh : to whatever degree it has at any 
time attained, it is the consummation of the divine pur- 
pose ; and this touch and intercourse of souls blended 
in Christ, responding to and co-operating with the work 
of God upon all souls, fills out the underlying concep- 
tion of the Holy Spirit. As we contemplate it, there 
comes into view a vast and elaborate spiritual organ- 
ism before which the material world and all phenomenal 
being are as the light dust of the balance. Whatever 
occurs in the experience of any man is part of that 
universal life for which and by which all exists. It is 
God flowing forth to all souls, and all souls reacting 
under his touch. No personality is extinguished, no 
arbitrary necessity is imposed ; but the countless mul- 
titude of souls made in the image of God are quickened 
in the germ and fostered through all their growth, that 
they may at last find their native and chosen satisfac- 
tion in the things of God — " that God maybe all in all." 

As we deal with this conception, we turn now towards 
its source, and the Holy Spirit is God ; we turn again 
towards the divine image growing in men, and the 
Holy Spirit is a disposition of the human soul ; or 
more often still we survey these alternating currents of 
divine influence and human aspiration, and the Holy 
Spirit is the whole of this blessed fellowship in which 
man and God are one. 

The speculations of theology which claim person- 



THE HOLY SPIRIT. 197 

ality for the Holy Spirit, find no support in the Bible 
fairly understood ; and this view is mischievous be- 
cause it obscures the whole subject. It is of the first 
importance to recognize the facts of this great spiritual 
organism, that we may add our will to its operation ; 
and we only do this effectively when we become con- 
scious that in this work we are not the recipients 
merely of divine impulses or help, but ourselves add 
energy to the force which is saving the world. It is 
participation of man with God and Christ in this great 
work which is expressed in the formula of benediction, 
" In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the 
Holy Spirit." Without this participation, the scheme 
of salvation would be a benign fatalism, with man 
in perpetual childhood, the mere recipient of divine 
operation. But with this, man becomes fellow-worker 
with God, under the leadership of Christ, and the 
entire chain of spiritual operation is complete. 

These studies having made us acquainted with the 
means which Christ employs for his work, we have 
next to consider the method which he follows in their 
use. 



I9 8 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

XIV. 

CHRIST'S METHOD. 

THE method of Christ is necessarily modelled after 
the general procedure of God. It is a wise con- 
servatism which develops the future out of the past. 
"I came not to destroy, but to fulfil." Accordingly, it 
will be found that each of his agencies is the continua- 
tion of something which had previously been working 
to similar ends. God began the education of the race 
at the first moment. He set in operation at each 
stage whatever agency was best fitted to further his 
work at that stage ; and Christ came in the fulness of 
times, in the sense that the work was only then far 
enough advanced to be ready for his hand. Any con- 
ception of a changed purpose on God's part, or of new 
contingencies not hitherto included in his purpose ; any 
thought of the adoption of means better than those 
which preceded had been for their time, or that any- 
thing was added in Christ which might previously 
have advantaged the world, would outrage every just 
conception of the character of God. 

The agencies which we have surveyed have always 
been at work. What Christ added was to enlarge 
them all to universal sufficiency ; to exhibit their per- 



CHRIST'S METHOD. 199 

feet work upon a human life ; and to make known all 
the fulness of that spiritual being which blends man 
with God in the Holy Spirit. We are to understand 
that the whole field of possible human needs is 
covered by the extension of these agencies which he 
effects. We are at present as far from having grasped 
all the efficiency of Christ, and being able to judge 
what he can accomplish for the welfare of men, as we 
are from knowing what will be the fortunes or the 
needs of future generations. Our confidence that all 
needs will be met rests on the marvellous history of the 
Christian ages, and on the assurance that the personal 
leadership of Christ is to continue till " all things shall 
be subdued unto him." The whole significance of his 
work is belittled and vitiated when it is imagined that 
for any reason, whether of limitation or new exultation, 
Christ's attitude towards men or his power to work 
their welfare was changed by his death. His apostles 
had no such idea. They found his help more power- 
ful, and worked more fruitfully by means of it, after he 
had gone from their sight. Peter said, " Jesus Christ 
maketh thee whole." Paul insisted that he had been 
taught by Jesus as truly and as directly as had any 
other apostle. The entire New Testament is full of 
the assurance that the death of Jesus had only intensi- 
fied the conscious relation between him and his dis- 
ciples. And to this conviction the people of God have 



200 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

always clung, and the results in their lives have justi- 
fied the claim. In fact, it has been a conspicuous 
feature of Christian history that the waning strength 
of the people of God has again and again been revived 
by a new personal allegiance and devotion to Christ. 
And if profound and enduring conviction of spiritual 
experience, authenticated, by constancy of purpose and 
nobility of life, be sufficient proof of a subjective fact, 
then the testimony of the ages abundantly proves that 
Christ the Lord is still accessible in living personality 
to all who love him. 

This does not raise him to Deity. It does not 
require in him omnipresence or omniscience. God 
has these attributes, and that suffices. If Christ is the 
Captain of our salvation, God is still the Sovereign : 
his God and our God. Nor need we be distressed if 
we cannot understand all the intricacies of such a 
relation. The simplest facts of spiritual operations 
tax our comprehension, and we may well leave to 
some future stage of loftier intelligence the deep things 
which lie beyond our grasp. It is enough to dwell in 
the assurance that through all the centuries the same 
hand which so skilfully laid out the beginnings of the 
work, the same heart which so wisely embraced the 
race of men, have been until now, and will be until 
the end, directing all the agencies by which men are 
brought to God. 



CHRIST'S METHOD. 201 

It is necessary to emphasize this persistency of 
Christ's work. He said of himself, " The Son of man 
is come to seek and to save that which was lost ; " and 
this necessarily means far more than any mere procla- 
mation, — the offering of a better way, which men may 
take or leave. Seeking implies solicitude and positive 
action. And lest too much seem built on a single 
word, a commentary may be found in his comparison 
of the shepherd who, having a hundred sheep and 
losing one, " goeth after that which is lost till he find 
it." This admits no ambiguity. The method of 
Christ is one of persistent, unwearied seeking, which 
will not remit till the lost is found. Nor does so great 
a conclusion rest on two or three assertions. The 
New Testament is full of this assiduity, expressed in 
many ways, and only corroborating what must be 
inferred from the facts of the case. Since God has a 
purpose to bring the race of man into harmony with 
himself, and has sent Christ to effect this purpose, 
how can the work cease until God's will is done ? 



202 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



XV. 

SALVATION FROM SORROW. 

THUS far we have studied the work of Christ from 
the standpoint of God's intent. We come now to 
view it from the point of man's experience. And the 
statement that he came to save the lost at once intro- 
duces us to the heart of the subject. This word lost, 
which exactly expresses in its primary meaning the 
facts of the case, has come, through much theological 
handling, to carry a secondary sense of finality. Of 
course one could not seriously speak of seeking and 
saving that which is known to be beyond recovery, and 
yet the taint of this acquired meaning so clings to the 
theological use of lost that we shall better grasp our 
subject if we substitute a synonym which has no such 
secondary implication. Let us understand, then, that 
Christ came to seek those who were astray, as sheep 
from the fold, or the traveller from his road. 

It is noticeable that he began with the assumption 
that his hearers were out of the right way, and needed 
his succor. We have no account of any objection to 
this assumption ; and indeed so generally has it been 
made by those who have taught in his name, and so 



SAL VA TION FROM SORRO W. 2 03 

generally admitted without protest by their hearers, 
that we may be sure some fact of universal experience 
is touched by this assertion. Nor shall we have any 
difficulty in rinding this fact. Most men begin life 
with high expectations ; but as the years go on nearly 
all discover that they are not realizing what they had 
confidently looked for. And yet disappointed men 
seldom acquiesce in their condition ; they complain 
with the tone of those who are defrauded. Now, this 
implies a certain fixed conception of life, which consti- 
tutes at first the expectation of the young, and later the 
ideal of the disappointed ; and through all runs a 
latent conviction that this ideal is what life ought to 
be, the proper way or state from which men in their 
actual experience are astray. Of course it would be 
impossible for most men to state clearly what they 
demand of life ; and certainly the current ideals are 
far from the Christian. But the fact that all men have 
some such conception, which they hope will, or think 
should, replace the imperfect present, puts all in posi- 
tion to give willing attention to the preacher of better 
things, and predisposes them to accept from him not 
merely treatment, but a new diagnosis of their dis- 
ease. 

When men come to seek a cause for this failure, it 

is found to lie either in the conditions which surround 

' them, or in their own voluntary conduct, or perhaps 



204 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

more often in both combined. It is hardly to be 
expected that the proportions of these causes will be 
justly assigned even by the most sincere, but the dis- 
tinction is true and is essential. It plainly points out 
the two difficulties which beset the life of man, the two 
senses in which men are astray ; and it thus prepares 
us for the double aspect of Christ's saving work. 
Those encroachments of external conditions which 
defeat the ideal of life are the causes of sorrow ; and 
those faults of will which bring an analogous result are 
sin. Now, Christ saves from sorrow and from sin ; 
and while the two are often blended, each lending sup- 
port to the other, yet to the candid mind they are so 
far distinct that they may best be discussed separately, 
due regard being always had to their more obvious 
connections. 

Directly in the way of these studies, however, stands a 
difficulty which must first be considered, — the so-called 
Mystery of Evil. Ever since men began to think of 
their state, they have proposed as a sore and difficult 
problem the question, " Why is the life of man beset 
with evil ? " And notwithstanding all the thinking of 
the ages, this remains to-day the most agitated of 
questions. Now, if this were merely a theoretical prob- 
lem, it would suffice to say that the questioner really 
asks why human life is different from his wishes, and 
to answer that it is so because his wishes differ from 



SALVATION FROM SORROW. 205 

God's, and God prevails. This is perfectly logical and 
fair. The objector cannot show that he is competent 
to conduct the world, nor that his ideal is the best, and 
he therefore has no right to judge an order of things 
which, after all, produces much success, by his untried 
notion of what might be better. This is the way in 
which the biblical writers meet the question, so far as 
they can be said to touch it at all ; and perhaps the 
highest practical wisdom of our time takes this atti- 
tude. But the problem is not merely one of the study ; 
it is the cry of burdened souls struggling with adversity, 
and tempted in their struggles to doubt the goodness 
or the existence of Him who is their only refuge. In 
a work like the present, therefore, the discussion can- 
not be waived. 

The subject has suffered much from confused think- 
ing, rhetorical exaggeration, and false sentiment. And 
most of the mystery which is attributed to evil will be 
found eliminated when these sources of perplexity are 
removed. 

The word evil is ambiguous. It may mean either 
hardship or wickedness. The discussion, therefore, is 
twofold, and each division is found to lose much of its 
obscurity by separation from the other. We have 
already discussed the mystery of sin ; and that large 
proportion of suffering which is obviously the result of 



206 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

the sufferer's own sin, offers no mystery beyond that of 
its cause. The present question is, " Why is the life 
of man subject to undeserved hardship ? " 

We must begin by asking to what extent the implied 
assertion is true. Those who look with honest eyes, 
and are not confronted with exceptional conditions, 
find life preponderantly wholesome and cheerful. Of 
the hundred persons whom one may encounter in an 
ordinary day, hardly two or three are seen actually 
suffering ; and even those whose lot is exceptionally 
hard spend but a small part of each day in positive dis- 
tress. It is customary to forget the alleviations of 
habit and interruption ; but in sober fact the staple of 
life consists of the placid and uneventful performance 
of function, which rises to delight far oftener than it 
sinks to pain. Life is subject to hardship, but does not 
consist of it. 

A further very large abatement must be made by 
excluding imaginary evils. For instance, it is custom- 
ary to speak of the hard lot of man under evolution. 
Races and families die out in the struggle for existence, 
the strongest surviving. But the individuals of all 
races and families die. The only peculiarity of dying 
races is sterility, so that the race or family is not re- 
cruited ; and surely it is no reasonable cause of com- 
plaint that the weak cease to produce weaklings. 
Similar reflections apply to the alleged sufferings of 



SALVATION FROM SORROW. 207 

privation. A highly sensitive and cultivated mind 
grieves that its neighbors have few thoughts above 
daily tasks and comfortable homes, or that their stand- 
ard of comfort is so far below its own. But when it is 
found that these objects of pity are quite unconscious 
of any hardship, and that among them the funda- 
mental virtues — honesty, self-control, devotion to duty, 
family affection — are fully as prevalent as among the 
cultivated, one may easily conclude that such pity is 
misplaced, and such accusations need no serious 
answer. 

The matter of physical pain, too, is greatly misun- 
derstood. Nothing is better established than the physi- 
ological necessity of pain. As a warning, a help to 
diagnosis, a beneficent and instructive punishment, 
pain is indispensable for the continuance of animal 
life ; nor is it possible to conceive any different sensa- 
tion that could take its place. The unpleasant and 
imperative quality of pain is exactly what makes it 
effectual. Nor must we admit exaggerated ideas of a 
needless excess of pain. All the less cultivated races 
astonish us by their indifference to wounds, and brute 
creatures receive hurts with almost the same readiness 
as they give them. " Nature red in tooth and claw " 
seems little conscious that she should be pitied. The 
argument, too, formerly turned much on the hardship 
of labor and fatigue. But experience has shown that 



208 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

work is the best school of manhood, and that the 
fatigue and trial which accompany it are more stimu- 
lant than hurtful. 

All these deductions being made, the fact remains 
that men are subject, in very unequal allotments, to 
undeserved physical suffering and spiritual anguish ; 
and it is a legitimate and urgent question why these 
things have a place in the plans of a beneficent God. 
To one who makes the inquiry for the first time under 
the stress of present suffering, any answer must be 
unsatisfactory. Pain obscures the mind and eclipses 
everything. And probably the alleged mystery has 
grown largely out of futile attempts to understand suf- 
fering at such times. But to the mind at liberty to 
attend, two very sufficient reasons can be given. For 
there are two results of the very highest importance 
in the education of man which are found by experi- 
ence to grow out of suffering, and are not known to 
be attainable by any other means. In the first place, 
there is a group of virtues of which part are developed 
by the endurance of suffering, and the rest by minis- 
tering to it; and neither could these be spared from 
human character, nor do they develop among those 
who are wholly at ease. And secondly, there is no 
part of human life which so perfectly educates the 
sense of brotherhood as those experiences which suf- 
fering and need produce. When all the abatements 



SALVATION FROM SORROW. 209 

already suggested have been made, a candid mind will 
not count the price too great for such inestimable 
results. 

Of course the salvation of Christ does not aim to 
abolish this beneficent process. It seeks to minimize 
the pain which must be borne, to increase the strength 
which bears it, and especially to produce that oneness 
with God which is the object alike of the suffering and 
the salvation. 

Nothing has so endeared Jesus to the hearts of his 
disciples as that he too was a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief. Those on whom the hardship 
of life has most heavily pressed, often of low or un- 
cultivated intelligence, have perceived that this august 
sufferer was somehow of high station and commanding 
power, which he used not to sweeten his own lot, but 
to relieve the woes of others ; and the unformulated 
consciousness of his greatness, of his compassion, and 
of his sorrows, has at once ennobled and assuaged 
their own distress. And in this his followers may 
closely imitate their Lord ; for the administration of 
such relief is among the greatest of the tasks to which 
Christ inspires the Church, and of this the Church 
has never quite lost sight. It is true that her official 
prescriptions and the studies of her theologians have 
dealt far more with the intellect and with personal 



210 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

conduct; but the real people of God have always 
clung to the comfort of Christian brotherhood, and no 
formalism or degradation has ever quite extinguished 
Christian charity. 

But there is far more than this. Since sorrow grows 
out of undesired relations with our surroundings, the 
readiest suggestion of relief lies in a readjustment, 
and this forms a prominent part of Christ's work. 
All true progress and reform are of this work, and 
tend directly to diminish sorrow. The Christian spirit 
constantly impels men to new labors in this field. 
And when difficulties accumulate and others grow dis- 
couraged, it is among Christians that every better 
tendency finds sure anchorage ; and hence it takes new 
impulse when the storm is past. But Christ speaks 
also to the intellect of the sorrowing. We have seen 
that his great revelation was the full meaning of divine 
fatherhood. To the conception of a father's guid- 
ing wisdom and administrative power he added pater- 
nal solicitude and patience, presenting to the mind of 
man love perfect in strength. And to this control he 
taught us that all the life of man is subject. We who 
suffer, and the conditions which cause our sorrow, are 
all alike held in the firm hand of the Father, and he 
administers all with the single purpose of bringing us 
into harmony with himself. Just in proportion as the 
mind of any man is enlarged, will this view of his life 



SALVATION FROM SORROW. 211 

abate his inevitable sorrows and help him to bear 
what cannot be removed. 

But besides the sentiment and the intellect, the will 
of man is much concerned with his sorrows. For it is 
plain to any enlightened judgment, the Stoic as well 
as the Christian, that very much of our suffering is 
the direct result of kicking against the pricks. Since 
God ordains to a definite end the course of things 
amid which we live, it is plain that if we are to find 
these things to our mind, our mind must be like his. 
The proportion of human sorrow which can be traced 
to disappointed ideals, to the obstinacy of wrong de- 
sire grown into habit, to voluntary struggle against 
recognized law, is far greater than any will believe 
who has not made the computation. Now, just so far 
as the will of God becomes our will, so far do all these 
sources of sorrow cease. Christian history is brilliant 
with examples of self-surrender which has filled the 
hearts of disciples with joy and peace under circum- 
stances that seemed to others intolerable ; nay, has 
found in these very circumstances cause for thanking 
God that they were counted worthy to suffer. 

Now, although we can give account in rational terms 
of all these processes by which Christ saves from sor- 
row, yet the experience of Christians transcends any 
enumeration of details. These are not rehearsed in 
the daily thoughts of the saved ; they are all compre- 



212 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

hended, and except for special occasions are swal- 
lowed up, in the consciousness of divine and human 
sympathy ; that is, in the Holy Spirit. It is neces- 
sary to bear always in mind that while for purposes 
of intellectual enlightenment we necessarily dissect 
such experience, and examine all its elements, yet as 
it enters into the life of man, the process of salvation 
from sorrow is neither complex nor mysterious. In 
him who is thus astray there is a sense of inward 
struggle and of surroundings with which he does not 
harmonize, and this is sorrow. But over him who 
has been found and brought back there comes an all- 
pervading sense of peace and content. He does not 
analyze nor explore; he simply lives surrounded by 
infinite love and inviolable safety, and warm with af- 
fection towards all mankind. Events adjust them- 
selves ; duties are delights ; life flows on as God wills : 
" to live is Christ, and to die is gain." 

There is one burden of sorrow, however, which 
seems to most men so large an element in the un- 
merited bitterness of life, that the subject cannot be 
passed without special consideration. This is death. 

The radical change which Christ made in the view 
of death has been sufficiently explained, and should 
completely dispose of that dread with which one may 
contemplate his own death. But there remains the 



SAL VA TION FROM SORRO W. 213 

heavy burden of sorrow which the death of others 
imposes. 

Grief for the death of others may be resolved into 
the sense of loss and anxiety for the future. And this 
sense of loss turns sometimes on the surrender of 
earthly advantages, and at other times on the separa- 
tion of friends. Defeated hopes, interrupted labors, 
the end of life's delight, are all answered by that trust 
in God which is the first of Christ's teachings. If we 
are sure that no sparrow falls without him, we may 
confidently believe that no human life is terminated 
without some wise design, and may leave to God's 
care what seems so foreign to our ways. And, indeed, 
in the particular of interrupted labors, which some- 
times seem so grievous a part of the calamity of death, 
experience shows that we greatly overestimate the im- 
portance of any man's work. Others appear who can 
continue, and often can better what was left undone ; 
and the persistency with which the work of the world 
goes on while men come and go, is one of the most 
obvious proofs of divine control. 

It is very different with the separation of friends. 
Light attachments, it is true, are outlived and re- 
placed, so that what appeared the most violent grief 
proves but a sort of emotional hysteria. But there are 
not a few unions of friends which grow so deeply into 
the heart, that when they are sundered no lapse of 



214 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

time and no new affection can obliterate the sense of 
loss. A part of the soul seems reft away. At the mo- 
ment of such bereavement it is futile for another to 
suggest, it is almost useless for the sufferer to recall, 
any form of consolation which addresses the reason. 
The only solace then is the consciousness of other 
friendships which yet remain. Human friends, while 
they cannot replace the loss, can ease the pain ; but 
the long-established repose of the soul upon the love 
of God goes far to rob even this grief of its sting. 

When, however, the shock is past, and the mind can 
think again, it is found that this sorrow looks much 
towards the future, and blends with that other element 
which has been named. So that it is by removing the 
anxiety for the future which death begets, that Christ 
becomes most effectually the comforter of those who 
mourn. We have considered one side of this forward 
look, and still another will more fitly fall under the 
head of salvation from sin ; but just here we are con- 
cerned with the question which so burdens the hearts 
of mourners, — whether friends parted by death will 
meet again. The Bible does not explicitly answer this 
question, although several of its writers betray an 
expectation that it will be so. But the view of life as 
a continuing development, which we have found to be 
Christ's teaching, seems to illuminate this subject. 

If the soul continues its life beyond death with full 



SALVATION FROM SORROW. 215 

.dentity, memory and affection must remain ; and if 
the object of continued as of present life is the devel- 
opment of the soul, those experiences treasured in 
memory, and those affections seated in the heart, 
which have already contributed to the ennobling of 
the soul, must continue to exercise their influence. 
But in the earthly life hardly anything contributes 
more powerfully to our development than continued 
intercourse with persons whom we nobly love. And 
therefore, since mutual intercourse may be as beneficial 
to these as to us, it seems inevitable to conclude that 
the divine solicitude will assure to us so important 
a means of spiritual growth. The conclusion, there- 
fore, is that in the life beyond death those friends will 
be again united whose intercourse truly furthers their 
spiritual advancement. Nor can we be mistaken in 
believing that the infinite Father's affection will not 
deny to his children this supreme desire of bereft and 
loving hearts. Since love is to draw all souls at last 
to him, the love of soul for soul must surely be strong 
enough to bring together, though it were from the ends 
of the universe, those who yearn unceasingly for each 
other. 



216 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

XVI. 

SAL FA TION FROM SIN. 

WE come now to the final topic for which all our 
previous studies have been preparatory, — 
salvation from sin. We have learned that sin is the 
opposition of man's will to God's, and is, therefore, 
unlike any other element in God's relations to his 
works ; for in all that is known to us of the uni- 
verse, there is nowhere else any sign of opposition, or 
the capacity for opposition, by any created thing to 
the law of its being. Sin alone, therefore, disturbs the 
harmony of the universe ; and we need not be sur- 
prised to find all the agencies by which God sustains 
and rules the world bent towards the cure of this 
blemish. At whatever point God's ordering of the 
world touches man, we shall always find that this 
order makes for righteousness. 

And, further, we have found that sin is no unex- 
pected intruder into the spiritual realm, but necessarily 
grows out of our nature as free agents. For since 
God will have from men hearty accord with the divine 
will, and not servile acquiescence, and since man can 
freely adopt God's will for his own in no other way 
than through profound conviction that nothing else so 






SALVATION FROM SIN 217 

well suits the requirements of his own nature, it follows 
that man must first try other ways than the divine, that 
he may have sure grounds for this conviction. There- 
fore, God will not merely lead us through his world to 
show us how well he has planned and constructed it. 
This, if this were all, must have won the approval of 
any intelligence ; but God will have far more than 
this. He will have us know his work to the core ; he 
puts it into our hands, to do with it what we will and 
can ; he will have us test it, try to better it, substitute 
other ways for his ways, learn through and through, 
negatively and positively, what are the works and what 
the will of God. No slight experience will suffice, nor 
any mere aggregate of individual tests. Men must 
try singly and in groups ; communities and various 
civilizations, with all their intricacies, must struggle 
with the order of things; one generation must hand 
down to another its incomplete experiments, till no 
combinations of human wisdom or human strength 
have left untried the effort to find higher satisfactions 
than God offers. 

And, simply guaranteeing that we cannot go so far 
as to ruin either his world or ourselves, he waits for us 
to be satisfied. He waits with endless patience and 
tenderness, and with the calm certainty that, when we 
have tried all and learned all, we shall reject all else 
and choose only his way. 



218 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

Of course God did not produce his human children 
without full foresight of these things ; and we must, 
therefore, avoid any thought of sin as interrupting the 
divine plan, or in the least degree constituting a fea- 
ture of the world not included in the original scheme 
of creation. And equally of course, we must expect 
to find that the means by which Christ is removing sin 
are not special agencies apart from the general order 
of life ; but that they consist in his adaptation of the 
familiar things of the world to this great work, accom- 
plishing thereby, amid the dullest routine of life, the 
original purpose with which God made the world. 
The New Testament is full of the idea that Christ 
takes up and completes a work long since begun ; that 
he is therefore a member — though the greatest mem- 
ber — of a long series of world-agencies, carrying on 
from step to step the eternal purpose. 

This conception forbids the idea that his contribu- 
tion to man's salvation consists of a single act, however 
momentous, or the acts of a single epoch. The entire 
history of Christianity, from the pages of the New 
Testament to our day, shows that the impulse given 
by Jesus in Judea has been sustained by continual 
contact of his spirit with the souls of men through all 
the ages. We have already considered this perpetual 
headship of Christ through the Holy Spirit, and it 
will therefore be understood that, even when his name 



SALVATION FROM SIN 219 

is not mentioned, the work of salvation now to be dis- 
cussed is Christ's w©rk, because he animates and 
guides every agency and every agent. 

The fundamental provision for the removal of sin 
lies in the fact that, as we have already seen, man is 
so constituted in the likeness of God, that to whatever 
degree he apprehends the things which concern him as 
God apprehends them, to that degree he will desire 
regarding them what God desires. Salvation, there- 
fore, is largely a process of enlightenment, including 
in this term not only the illumination of the intellect, 
but the right development of the sentiments, since 
the things of God can be apprehended only by the 
action of head and heart duly harmonized. But en- 
lightenment is not all ; for we have found a third factor 
which impedes the free action of conscience and will, 
— the force of habit. This might be resolved into a 
motive of the will, since the habitual way is the line of 
least resistance, and a sluggish will may see promise 
of more satisfaction in declining to resist than in any 
inducement to effort. But without dwelling on this 
analysis, the fact is important that repeated yielding 
to sin establishes a habit of sinning which reduces 
the voice of conscience to a protest, and the action of 
the will to mere acquiescence, and in this way enfee- 
bles and degrades the whole man. To a sinner so 



220 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

weakened, all the inducements to virtue seem ad- 
dressed in vain ; and his first need is some discipline 
which shall break the yoke of habit and reinvigorate 
the moral nature. 

These considerations show us that salvation from 
sin must consist, so far as it can be reduced to sys- 
tematic statement, of enlightenment and strengthen- 
ing. To these must be added persuasion, of which we 
shall have to take ample account, but which almost re- 
fuses to be classified as a part, since it seems rather 
the informing spirit of the whole work. Now, Christ 
provides all these, but not in any rigid method of 
routine. For so different are the characters and ex- 
periences of men, that some learn first what is the last 
lesson of others, and no sequence of development can 
be suggested which will fit the actual experience of 
any large group of men. This, however, does not 
forbid us to adopt an order of study, provided we 
always remember that the order belongs to logical 
thought, and not to daily life. And in this way we 
shall take up, one by one, the really inseparable ele- 
ments of that process by which Christ saves from sin. 

But in order to appreciate the greatness of the 
resources which are provided for this work, and the 
necessary slowness of its progress, we must consider 
more fully the obstacles which lie in the way. For sin 



SALVATION FROM SIN 221 

is really an absurdity ; and if experience did not sadly 
prove the contrary, we should suppose a few demon- 
strations and a little advice all that might be needed. 
It will be well, therefore, to correct this fancy by 
examining some of the difficulties- which beset the 
overthrow of sin. 

The first of these relates to enlightenment. Men 
must be brought to apprehend the things which con- 
cern them as God apprehends. These things are the 
physical world, including our own bodies, other men, 
and God. Now, we are born without any knowledge 
of these, and with only rudimentary faculties for 
knowing them, and we have at the same time to 
develop the faculties, and by means of them acquire 
the knowledge. Of course immature faculties cannot 
grasp the magnitude of the entire task ; and, imagining 
that it is nearly accomplished, they draw far-reaching 
conclusions from very scanty experience. This is 
done, too, at the most receptive period of life ; and the 
conclusions become imbedded in the growing mind, to 
bias alike the development and the knowledge which 
the future brings. When it is added that the will is in 
free exerc'ise during this process, and has much con- 
trol over the course of daily experience, it will be easily 
understood why most men, before they set themselves 
to consider the things of God, have already views of 
life and its satisfactions to which they cling tena- 



222 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

ciously, and in which error is largely and intricately 
mixed. Now, to whatever extent these views differ 
from God's views, salvation must modify or eradicate 
them. It is probably well for those who attempt to 
co-operate in the work of Christ, that we are so little 
able to appreciate the magnitude of this difficulty. 

Another obstacle lies in the enfeebling power of sin- 
ful habit. So heavy is this yoke, that it has seemed 
to the majority of Christian thinkers to imply an in- 
nate aptitude for sin, as if sin were the established 
destiny of man. The facts of experience do not sup- 
port this theory. It is a fancy of the closet, and is 
practically ignored by those who, laboring for reform, 
have become acquainted at close quarters with the 
worst of sinners. But however erroneous the explana- 
tion, it remains as a fact universally observed, that 
habitual sin taints the whole man, paralyzes the will, 
which should throw it off, and seems to become an 
essential part of his being. There is still another dif- 
ficulty not easily explained, but which the familiar 
experience of life knows in this as well as many other 
connections, — obstinacy. The will often chooses to 
disregard conscience for no recognizable reason be- 
yond the pleasure of self-assertion. The strength of 
this obstinacy and the unreasonable occasions of its 
exercise constitute both a difficulty and a puzzle in 
the way of moral reform, and can be by no means left 
out of our account. 



SALVATION FROM SIN 223 

Now, no one can rightly estimate or successfully 
study the saving work of Christ who does not appre- 
ciate the greatness of the task as shown by these ob- 
stacles. And yet the work itself does not wait for 
deep study nor for philosophical analysis. We must 
always remember that such investigations as these are 
not preliminary to the facts, nor to our participation in 
the facts. God is saving the world through Christ ; 
and thousands who do not well understand his pro- 
cesses are helping them forward. The Holy Spirit in 
men's hearts enables them efficiently to respond to the 
divine process both in forsaking their own sins and in 
bringing others to righteousness, even though they 
have not thought to ask how such things can be done. 

Returning now to our inquiries, we have first to 
study Christ's methods of making men " wise unto sal- 
vation; " that is, of enlightenment. In its most general 
aspect this coincides with the whole breadth of Chris- 
tian civilization ; and this phrase has far more meaning 
than is generally understood. No man can have any 
contact with social or domestic affairs, with politics, 
business, or law, without coming under some touch of 
the Gospel as it is diffused through the whole life of 
the community by the force of Christian institutions. 

It is not contended that this enlightenment abol- 
ishes sin, or can at any point of attainment suffice to 



224 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

save men. But it prepares the way of Christ with 
great power. It secures place and opportunity for his 
church ; it diffuses the Bible ; it brings into perpetual 
contact those who do and those who do not follow 
him. It also prepares the way for the consciousness 
of sin by bringing men to consider their actions as 
personal and voluntary, not customary and of course. 
It begins the subjection of the animal to the spiritual 
nature, and opens avenues of divine access not pos- 
sible without it. 

Another general means of enlightenment is the in- 
struction imparted by personal contact. It is hardly 
possible to overestimate this power of personal influ- 
ence, and it is not generally remembered how widely it 
is exercised. In public and in private, by priest and 
by preacher, by parents and friends, the principles of 
the Gospel, illustrated by Christian lives and vivified 
by personal enthusiasm, are unceasingly pressed upon 
the attention of Christendom. His lot must be indeed 
peculiar who does not at some time come under this 
influence. And all these agents draw their inspiration 
from the Church, which in turn derives it from the life 
of Christ, externally through the Bible history, and in- 
ternally through the Christian consciousness. Thus 
the stream of personal influence originating with the 
Saviour, and re-enforced by the personality of his 
servants, finds in the Christian civilization its possi- 



SALVATION FROM SIN 225 

bility of free exercise, and encompasses the lives of 
men. 

All this is the environment. We have now to study 
the work of enlightenment within the hearts of men. 
Each man's circumstances, as we have seen, are ar- 
ranged by God for the development of his character ; 
and we have studied the process by which experience 
demonstrates the futility of sin. When this process 
has profoundly impressed this conviction upon the 
mind, it constitutes the beginning of conversion ; that 
is, the turning of the soul from sin to virtue. We 
shall have to make very careful study of this opera- 
tion, and the point which we have now reached natur- 
ally introduces it by a consideration of punishment. * 

The successive conceptions of divine punishment 
which have prevailed in Christian theology, illustrate 
the fact that the dogma which expresses for any age its 
understanding of the truth, is mainly determined by 
the tone of contemporary life. In ignorant and bar- 
barous times the imagination has labored to fill the 
subject with horrors; while the increasing substitution 
of more humane views in our day reflects far less the 
power of argument than the influence of a higher 
civilization. And yet some apprehension of the true 
basis of this doctrine has never wholly perished. 
Dante makes the inscription over the gates of hell 
recite that the place was founded by eternal wisdom 



226 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

and love. Endless ingenuity has been spent in trying 
to reconcile this with the awful scenes which follow ; 
but the effort is in vain. The paradox simply shows 
that while in a moment of abstraction the poet may 
utter an echo of the primal truth, yet when the imagina- 
tion is set in play its pictures are determined by his 
environment. Our studies will enable us easily to 
grasp this primal truth. 

Punishment is the painful consequence which sin, 
under the existing order of the universe, necessarily 
entails upon the sinner. It cannot be thought of in 
the commercial way, — so much punishment for so 
much sin, — because sins are too subtle and compli- 
cated for the mind to make any comparative estimate 
of them ; and therefore, even if we conceive the divine 
wisdom to apportion an exact degree of punishment 
to every shade of guilt, still, since we are unable to 
appreciate such nicety, it could have no effect on us. 
But in fact the divine Judge does not sentence us for 
our covert acts, nor yet for separate sinful volitions. 
It is guiltiness, and not specific instances of guilt, to 
which he addresses his punishments. God is not aim- 
ing to " get even " with the sinner. No balanced 
account of exactly awarded penalties would satisfy 
him if at the end the sinner remained sinful still. 
His entire aim is to make to the sinner, as to a rea- 



SALVATION FROM SIN 227 

sonable being, a certain demonstration of the nature 
of sin ; and whatever degree of chastisement is needed 
to effect this, is the due measure. But there is another 
quality of punishment well known to have far greater 
moral efficacy than degrees of severity, and that is 
certainty. All human experience goes to prove this, 
although it is the element most lacking in criminal 
procedure among men. In the divine administration, 
however, inviolable certainty of punishment is the 
characteristic most emphasized. We shall have much 
to learn of divine forgiveness ; but divine pardon, as 
the word applies to human governments, is incon- 
ceivable. And the reason lies in the nature of sin, and 
consequently of its results. 

We have found that sin is the determination of the 
will to follow a way other than God's, and that the 
inducement to this is the hope of greater satisfaction. 
But as man and the universe are adjusted, it is impos- 
sible that any way should yield to the mature soul so 
much satisfaction as the way of God. Now, in order 
that man may certainly learn this from the experi- 
ments of his immaturity, — that is, from his sins, — the 
result of every trial must be inexorable. Unless he 
will alter the constitution of his universe, God cannot 
separate the result from the sin, and man can escape 
punishment only by avoiding sin. The punishment 
may be physical or spiritual, immediate or delayed, in 



228 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

this world or another, but because it has a work to do 
upon man for which no other provision is made or is 
conceivable, all the energy of the divine love is pledged 
to its inexorable administration ; and hell, rightly un- 
derstood, does rest on love and wisdom. 

Out of the same consideration grows the necessary 
limit of punishment. The only imaginable reason 
why the good God should inflict suffering upon his 
creatures, is that it is the certain means of their high- 
est good. Therefore, the responsibility which God 
assumes in undertaking the moral education of his 
children, pledges him on the one hand to produce 
this result in every case to which he applies chastise- 
ment, " whereof all are partakers ; " and on the other 
hand to push this dreadful agency no farther than the 
result requires. 

But punishment carried to its full effect can do no 
more than convince the mind that sin is ill-advised, 
and so produce submission. Another agency must 
co-operate to bring the will into harmony with God. 
This is found in the constant beneficence of the 
divine order, concurrent with the sinner's other experi- 
ence. No earthly lot is without evidence of this. 
There can be no sorrow so deep but some soul has 
found cause to praise God in equal depths. And the 
ordinary life of man is so full of daily blessings 
(though we take them as things of course), that when 



SAL VA TION FROM SIN. 229 

the mind, defeated in its experiments of evil and 
humbled into self-distrust, casts about for some other 
guide, it needs only to be shown these evidences of 
the divine presence and love to recognize and ac- 
knowledge their lesson. And then some touch of the 
Holy Spirit, through channels human or divine, begins 
the gracious change towards virtue. 

An objection to this view of the results of human 
experience may be based upon the fact that the events 
and punishments of a lifetime are often not seen to 
have produced any good effect upon evil men, and 
they die in their sins. In answer to this it becomes 
necessary to elaborate a point already touched upon. 
We found in the resurrection of Christ assurance that 
the soul at death departs with all its faculties unim- 
paired, and with full remembrance of its earthly expe- 
rience. Now, with Christ's revelation of continuous 
life, in which death is only an incident, and remem- 
bering that the whole purpose of our being is to grow 
towards the divine likeness (which no man has at- 
tained at the hour of death), we may conclude that 
this growth must continue after death as before, until 
it finds consummation in some future, however remote. 
And to this the memories of earthly life must contrib- 
ute, co-operating with the unknown new conditions 
which will then surround the soul. 

For we find in our present state that the fruits of 



230 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

experience often ripen long after the experience is 
past. Indeed, it seldom happens that a man grasps 
the full meaning or instruction of the passing day ; but 
memory and reflection, with perhaps the help of some 
further happenings, mature at length a full under- 
standing of the past. Now, no reason can be conceived 
why this may not freely occur after disembodiment. 
It may well be that the new conditions will powerfully 
promote that study by each man of his own life in the 
flesh, which will open to him all the meaning in it 
which he had not seen before. And in this way we 
may surmise a use for those numberless experiences, 
sometimes entire lives, which seem utterly fruitless 
and wasted. Useless as they seem to us, they are 
impressing upon the dull soul a wide range of fearful 
knowledge, which the power of the divine touch can 
transmute into heavenly wisdom and sympathy. 

This process is not wholly conjectural. It is some- 
times seen here when the desperately wicked turn to 
God and become most efficient agents in saving the 
lost. And to make easily acceptable the suggestion 
that this must be the normal destiny of every sinful 
soul in the life beyond death, we need only the assur- 
ance that the divine hand never forsakes the depraved, 
but directs all their earthly experience, amid whatever 
depths of wickedness, to this appointed end. But 
when these experiences begin their work upon the 



SA L VA TION FR OM SIN. 231 

awakened soul, we may well believe that their results 
will not be wrought without pain and anguish, so that 
the doctrine of punishments after death, which has 
been so tenaciously held by the Church, seems fully 
warranted by this view. Only it must always be 
remembered that no suffering can befall men here or 
hereafter without God's will, and that the divine 
Fatherhood can inflict no pain which has not for its 
aim and its assured result the infallible purpose of 
God, — that we may become partakers of his holiness. 

Now, out of these two elements combined — namely, 
punishment and the perception of God's goodness — 
grows the consciousness of sin. It is not the mere 
humiliation of defeat ; but when with this is coupled 
the recognition that all his struggles have been against 
patient love, then for the first time the sinner knows 
his sin. But at this point a new difficulty appears; 
namely, the psychological fact that sin perverts the 
judgment and produces a certain delusion of which the 
consequences have been vast beyond measure. The 
conscious sinner, humiliated and aware of God, is con- 
vinced that he has forfeited the divine favor, and can 
regain it, if at all, only by some act of propitiation. 
This belief has been common to all men under all 
forms of religion. Priestcraft has thriven on the pre- 
tence of placating God or the gods, and there has been 



232 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

no limit to the penances which men have gladly 
endured with the hope of regaining the divine favor. 
The memory of past sins seems to them an accumu- 
lation of indebtedness from which they have no 
power to escape, which they are persuaded God has 
a right and is disposed to exact with rigor, and for 
which in their despair they seek somehow to win his 
pardon. 

Now, from the first, Christians have understood that 
Christ came to release sinners from this despair, and 
countless multitudes have looked to him with this 
assurance, and come out of darkness into great light 
and peace. It has mattered little to the sufferers by 
what process this might be conceived to be done. 
They have accepted any offered explanation of the 
happy fact. But the thinkers of the Church have en- 
tangled themselves in a web of impossibilities as dis- 
honorable to God as it was discreditable to themselves. 
And all the difficulty has grown out of the mistake of 
fancying that the sinner, bewildered in his sin, is com- 
petent to tell us of spiritual things, and that therefore 
his assurance that he has forfeited the divine favor and 
needs to propitiate God, is true. 

But Christ came to tell the world that the despair- 
ing sinner is deluded ; that nothing man can do ever 
changes God's desire towards him, — no depth of de- 
pravity, no mountain of guilt, no life-long hardness of 



SALVATION FROM SIN 2$$ 

heart can for a moment raise any barrier between him 
and God, except the existing sinfulness of his own 
heart ; and at whatever moment this ceases to exist, he 
will know the fulness of divine love. There are no ar- 
rears of sin. There is an awful bondage grown out of 
the awful past, and much and long must the soul labor 
to overthrow habit and attain Christian maturity ; but 
at every point the gracious Father beckons and helps 
and waits ; nor can the saved soul look back to any 
moment at which God was estranged or angry. To 
men painfully striving to win God's forgiveness, Christ 
announces that forgiveness is the normal and unalter- 
able attitude of God. It must not be overlooked that 
forgiveness is made conditional in the Bible, and the 
condition, however worded, requires abandonment of 
sin and a tender heart. " If ye forgive not men their 
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your tres- 
passes." But we need not stumble at the language, 
and we must insist upon the fact. The language is 
simply that of daily life, which Jesus customarily used. 
His help to men did not depend on words ; he taught 
through the facts of life. He has no formal discourse 
on forgiveness, but the parable of the prodigal ex- 
presses, both more plainly and more profoundly than 
any formula, the waiting readiness of God. Now, the 
prodigal knew himself forgiven only when he went to 
his father ; and so the very simple meaning of these 



234 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

conditions is that hard hearts are incapable of receiv- 
ing God's forgiveness, though he waits to bestow it. 

The death of Jesus on the cross has always been 
felt, with whatever clearness or obscurity of thought, 
to be the culminating point of that process by which 
he helps fearful sinners towards God, — the atonement. 
This is repeated and emphasized in the New Testa- 
ment. He died, "the righteous for the unrighteous. " 
Sinners are washed clean in his blood. The cross is 
the symbol of salvation. Now, much of this, and the 
strongest of it, is imagery addressed to Jews, and bor- 
rowed from the sacrifices of the ancient ritual. But 
when all allowance is made for this, it still remains 
conspicuous that the cross of Christ is in the thought 
of the apostles the focus of his saving work. Nor 
need we look beyond the New Testament to find the 
explanation. This death was the seal and crown of all 
his life ; so that whatever he had done or taught is 
here expressed with immeasurable emphasis. As an 
example of the highest living he here consummates all 
in an act which combines the sublimest faith with the 
humblest obedience. And as God's Word, his perfect 
revelation and expression, he here exemplifies the love 
of God beyond all the power of speech or doctrine. 
Upon this the apostles dwell and enlarge, their strains 
being all summed up in the unanswerable question of 



SAL VA TION FR OM SIN. 235 

Paul : " He that spared not his own Son, but delivered 
him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely 
give us all things ? " 

The method, then, by v/hich Christ meets this univer- 
sal delusion of the sinner, is by emphasizing the love 
of God, demonstrating and urging it through all his 
life, and at last most of all upon the cross. And all 
experience has proved the efficacy of this atonement, 
this bringing of men to God. Through all the cen- 
turies, whatever the intricacies of theological explana- 
tion, the simple faith of the people of God has clung 
to the Crucified, has looked on him and dared to hope. 
And in our own day, they who go among the lost to 
bring them back, find no means so powerful as the 
story of the cross, exemplified and interpreted by their 
own unselfish lives. 

We have now studied Christ's process of enlighten- 
ment, which is found to be much more than informing 
the intellect ; for it includes that quickening of senti- 
ment by which the divine goodness is apprehended. 
The sinner upon whom this has been wrought is now 
delivered from his two delusions ; namely, that sin can 
satisfy man, and that it can forfeit the favor of God. 
And this brings him to the point indicated in the 
career of the prodigal "when he came to himself." A 
man in this condition, taking account of his own state, 



236 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

may find within himself a true knowledge of sin, 
coupled with an abhorrence of it. At the same time 
he realizes that the course of events will continue to 
offer temptations which he is fearfully conscious he 
can hardly resist. But he also knows that God sur- 
rounds him with his goodness, calls him to his service, 
and urges upon his acceptance, under the administra- 
tion of Christ, all needed help. The inevitable result 
of all this sincerely experienced is again portrayed in 
the story of the prodigal : the sinner says, " I will arise 
and go to my Father." This is repentance, and it 
includes all the elements which have been named, — 
abhorrence of sin, consciousness of danger, trust in 
divine help, and determination to struggle towards 
righteousness. 

This completes the process of conversion. The 
conscience, the intellect, and to some extent the will, 
are turned from evil towards virtue. And yet experi- 
ence shows that the soul at this stage is far from being 
securely won to God. A further work, both long and 
difficult, is to be accomplished. No soul once in the 
bondage of sin has been known so completely to 
escape . from it that some force of temptation, some 
hour of weakness, might not again seduce it. For the 
practical purposes of life it is enough to recognize this 
warning fact, to keep up the struggle, and at each 
crisis to seek anew the divine help. But a study like 



SALVATION FROM SIN 237 

ours would be incomplete if we did not endeavor to 
understand the cause of this discouraging fact, and 
the nature of the help which Christ applies to it. We 
must exclude those backslidings in which conscience 
is not at first clear and it is only after the new sin 
that the sinner recognizes its character. This merely 
indicates a defect of enlightenment, and does not fall 
under the head we have now to consider. The mys- 
terious fact before us is that when reason has de- 
nounced and conscience protested, the will yet decides 
to seek the satisfaction which temptation offers. 

Now, to a certain extent this must always remain a 
mystery, for it involves a mental act which seems in- 
scrutable. It is fundamental, and probably can never 
be resolved into any simpler ideas. Let us examine 
this. When after full enlightenment we hesitate 
before temptation, we are conscious that the will is 
balancing. It is not the deliberation of reason, it 
is not any appeal of sentiment, nor even an uncer- 
tainty of conscience ; it is the poising of the will 
before its definite determination : and these two acts 
constitute the unique peculiarity of the will by which 
it originates a new departure, and which is comparable 
with nothing but the creative act of God. But while 
we may not fathom this ultimate fact, we know much 
about it. Since the will, equally with intellect and 
sentiment, is under the primary law of our being, that 



238 THE PURPOSE OF GOD 

no way can in the end satisfy it but God's way, it 
follows that such a reversion to sin indicates immatur- 
ity of the will. So that the difficulty is, that while 
reason and sentiment are profoundly won to God, are 
satisfied with their experience of sin, and have decided 
for virtue, the will, still immature, does not certainly 
act with them. 

The remaining measures of salvation, therefore, 
must be addressed to the further development of the 
will. But since the will is an inseparable faculty of 
the man, and can reach its maturity only through har- 
mony with reason and sentiment, it is easily seen that 
these, which in the case before us are more highly 
developed, must be the means of educating the will 
also. And this task — assuming the continuance of 
those enlightening means which we have studied — is 
twofold : First, the force of habit by which the will 
decides off-hand for sin must be broken by prolonged 
exercise in forming determinations for virtue ; and 
second, the will must be persuaded. In both these 
tasks reason and sentiment co-operate ; but the task of 
persuading the will, by far the more momentous of the 
two, is mostly that of sentiment. Great as this is, and 
difficult as its ultimate processes are to understand, 
yet as a matter of experience it is simple and familiar. 
No fact of daily life is surer than that sentiment can 
persuade the stubborn will. Honor, patriotism, pa- 



SALVATION FROM SIN 239 

rental affection, personal love, are seen every day to 
be stronger motives than greed or love of life or un- 
reasoning obstinacy itself. And it is through this 
constraint of his love that Christ most effectually wins 
the soul, wins those, indeed, whom nothing else can 
turn. Through all the processes which have seemed 
in our cold analysis half mechanical, runs this inde- 
scribable power of the Holy Spirit, giving them force 
no words can measure. And sometimes with no pro- 
cess that can be named, by its own tender efficacy, the 
love of Christ constrains us. It may come through 
the story of his life or his death, quickened by the 
imagination into present reality ; it may be interpreted 
and made tangible through a human heart which he 
has kindled ; or out of all life's course, with no defini- 
tion of time or place, there may steal upon the hard or 
careless soul a sense of brooding goodness, a con- 
sciousness of the everlasting arms, an inarticulate 
appeal as of deep calling unto deep, " Son, give me 
thy heart" Before these persuasions of the Holy 
Spirit, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life and 
the obstinacy of the stubborn will all melt away, and 
another soul is Christ's. 



240 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 



XVII. 
SANCTIFICA TION. 

THAT turning of the soul from sin to virtue which 
we have been considering under the name of 
conversion, is only a beginning. The perfect work of 
the Gospel upon men consists in the formation of set- 
tled and permanent character, and is necessarily a slow 
and continued process. The work of conversion is 
more dramatic, and admits more precise statement of 
details ; but it is worthless except as the beginning of 
patient character-building, which is the ultimate aim 
of all God's dealing with men, and therefore the true 
function of the Gospel. No better name for this 
process can be found than that familiar in theology, — 
Sanctification ; and we have now to study the agencies 
by which this is effected. 

These agencies are largely associated with the 
Church ; some of them, indeed, being hardly possible 
without such an organization. But it must be insisted 
upon that Christ is limited to no such bounds ; for the 
history of the Christian ages repeatedly shows the 
Church misled into repudiation or persecution of those 
who were far nearer the Gospel standard than herself. 



SANCTIFICATION. 241 

We may group the means of sanctification under three 
heads, — work, association with the spiritually minded, 
and intercourse with God. 

Christian work includes not only what is done for 
the maintenance and extension of religious institutions, 
but all effort which grows out of the principles of the 
Gospel, and seeks unselfishly to further the welfare of 
men. Such work bears double fruit. The primary 
result is upon those to whom it is directed, and we 
have had occasion to dwell on this. But, secondarily, 
the work reacts upon the worker so greatly to his 
advantage in his struggle against sin, that every wise 
Christian carefully provides himself a place which will 
hold him to its exercise. The essential benefit is 
that by the necessities of the work the will is trained 
to the habit of right decisions. Especially the habit is 
formed of holding to a settled purpose as against pass- 
ing impulse. The conduct of work, too, requires the 
co-ordination of will with reason, and so promotes the 
harmony of the two. But even more valuable than 
this is the rousing of sentiment, particularly the sense 
of brotherhood. The erratic or stubborn determinations 
of the will are generally solitary, and always selfish ; 
and the appreciation of want which we can relieve, 
together with the delight of beneficence, profoundly 
antagonizes the solitary and selfish mood. 



242 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

A still more deep and subtile result is the apprehen- 
sion, rather by sentiment than by thought, of that 
divine order which embraces the lives of men. As we 
have seen, man is native to this. As he rises to higher 
development, he more and more appreciates the fitness 
and beauty of God's ways, and chooses them for his 
own. Now, the participation which Christian work 
gives in this divine order, the necessity of studying 
how others may be helped, and the satisfaction of 
finding that our efforts, rightly directed, are truly help- 
ful, initiate the soul into the fellowship, divine and 
human, of the Holy Spirit. And this has a necessary 
permanence. He who has been a fellow-worker with 
God to the extent of understanding his own work, will 
find God's methods so wise and delightful that he will 
desire no others. All this may be said of another 
species of Christian work, — the wise ordering of one's 
own life. The restraint of appetite, the subduing of 
passions, the habitual substitution of tranquil satisfac- 
tion for boisterous delight, all accomplish the same 
double purpose of training the will to habitual recti- 
tude, and of bringing the whole man more and more to 
love the ways of divine wisdom. 

Association with the spiritually minded brings again 
before us the subject of the Church, but in an aspect 
which we have not yet considered. It has been stated 



SANC TIFICA TION. 2 43 

that the sense of Christian brotherhood means far more 
than similarity of belief or taste ; indeed, it may not 
include these at all. Brotherhood implies a lasting 
relationship which grows out of the common Father ; 
a tender sympathy which concerns itself with the best 
welfare of others ; a joyful communion which is more 
than casual intercourse, which over-rides and outlives 
differences, even of much importance, and has in 
itself an assurance of perpetuity beyond the mere 
voluntary relations of life. It is by virtue of this half- 
recognized bond that the Church has lived. So true 
is this, that the bond of brotherhood has prevailed 
even against a most mischievous error, which has 
plagued the Church from the apostles to our day, and 
which is in this connection so important that we must 
give it full consideration. 

The Christian brotherhood has asserted itself in 
every age in the strong desire of Christian unity. No 
day and no sect has been without this desire. But 
unity has almost always been expected in some visible 
form. To hold the same creed, to worship by the 
same ritual, to own the same ecclesiastical allegiance, 
have been supposed to be, singly or combined, the 
necessary method of unity. It might seem that the 
unvarying experience of eighteen centuries had suf- 
ficiently demonstrated the fallacy of such expectations , 
and yet the air is full to-day of similar efforts along 



244 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

these same lines. But this conception is so wrong 
that if success were possible in this way it would be 
disastrous. Success would imply the identity of all in 
intellectual belief, or in sentimental responsiveness, or 
in the craving for personal liberty, or in all these com- 
bined. The argument under each of these three heads 
being identical, we may shorten, without obscuring, 
the discussion by confining our study to the first, which 
is by far the most prominent and important. 

Clearly looked at, nobody expects all or many men 
to think exactly alike. But this fact has been ob- 
scured by attempts to formulate creeds in which all 
might join. These, however, always prove to be 
scanty just in proportion to their apparent success; 
and the result is a group of men who are as far as 
ever from thinking alike, but who, in consideration of 
things in which they agree, and which they hold to be 
important, are willing mutually to ignore the many 
other things in which they differ. And even these 
points of agreement are always so vaguely put as to 
admit different shades of meaning. So that the whole 
result is rather a testimony to the desire of harmonious 
union, than any real intellectual agreement. Now 
this is perfectly legitimate, and indeed necessary, as 
a device for enabling groups of men to work smoothly 
together ; and so long as the formulas are understood 
to be temporary and voluntary, they are to be ap- 



S A NOTIFICATION 245 

proved. The tendency, however, has always been to 
pronounce these creeds final and obligatory ; and each 
new conclave propounds its latest statement of belief 
as if this at last were the very truth, and would escape 
the fate of all its predecessors. But history has no 
more constant lesson than the transient quality of 
opinion. It is not enough to see that these things 
are always so ; a little study will show us that the 
welfare of the Church demands the failure of all at- 
tempts at intellectual uniformity. 

For truth is many-sided and voluminous, and no 
man's point of view or capacity of observation suffices 
for all of it. Therefore, it is the order of our being 
that each shall supplement his neighbor, so that by 
mutual corrections and combinations there will come 
to be among men, and among groups of men, a much 
wider and more accurate knowledge of the truth than 
any man could either attain or securely hold alone. 
Besides, the divine purpose is concerned in this be- 
cause it brings home to men their mutual dependence, 
and demonstrates, while it increases, the bond of 
human society. Now, within the Church this is es- 
pecially true and important. It being granted that the 
Church at large, each church in the denominational 
sense, and each church in the local sense, must inevi- 
tably include many varieties of belief, we immediately 
see how the fact enlarges our opportunities. If only 



246 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

the mistaken desire of uniform belief can be dis- 
pelled, and the fact accepted that true Christian unity 
rests upon the far deeper sense of brotherhood, differ- 
ences being expected and welcomed, opinions being 
expressed without obloquy and compared without 
passion, each member must find his views corrected 
in details and broadened in general, "till we all come 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
Christ." 

During this process the unity of brotherhood al- 
ready recognized is strengthened by these mutual 
contributions, being " compacted by that which every 
joint supplieth." This, it must be observed, is very 
far from " toleration," which is almost as destructive 
of true brotherhood as intolerance. It is the glad 
welcome given to each man's contribution, the eager 
sifting of all sands, that no gold may escape. 

This discussion of beliefs has not been brought for- 
ward here to give them the first place, but, on the con- 
trary, to suggest how that condition which has through 
the ages hindered the true brotherhood and made it 
unfruitful, may, in the secondary position which be- 
longs to it, contribute to the strengthening and en- 
largement of the true life of the Church. This is love, 
the love of brotherhood, without which the tongue of 
angels, the solving of all mysteries, prevailing faith, 
and the martyr's stake are nothing. In such a brother- 



SA NOTIFICATION. 247 

hood the soul wavering between principle and tempta- 
tion must find a strong assurance of virtue. The 
moral atmosphere, the keen delight in the things of 
God, the common worship, the love on every hand, 
which he could not choose to wound, all combine to 
educate the whole man, and to harmonize will with 
conscience. 

Another form of such association is found in study 
of the Bible. The other relations of the Bible have 
been sufficiently discussed already ; but we have still to 
consider the help it gives in the formation and estab- 
lishment of Christian character. The whole range of 
history affords nowhere else such instances of moral 
strength, of intelligent virtue, of efficient manhood, in 
a word, of many-sided human greatness, as have ap- 
peared among those reared under the influence of 
this book. And this has not come of its use as a 
text-book, a code of morals, least of all as a manual of 
dogmatic theology. One may safely say it has come 
in spite of such uses overstrained. The great result 
has come from deep familiarity with the human life 
depicted and expressed in the Bible. The vast assem- 
blage of noteworthy men who live in these pages, 
crowned by the supreme person of the Man of Naz- 
areth, becomes to him who grows familiar with the 
Scriptures part of his own experience. Their char- 



248 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

acters, their trials, their outbursts of triumph or de- 
spair, their virtues and their faults, above all, the 
sturdy faith in God and things divine which runs 
through every page, grow into our memory as if we 
had witnessed and shared them all. 

And the effect upon ourselves is not like that of 
precepts learned or the discipline of a school ; it is 
that growth of our own character which comes of 
familiar intercourse with great souls. As they erect 
themselves who look upon stately beauty, so the soul 
which consorts with this numberless company of 
worthies grows stalwart in its manhood, and reaches 
towards the perfect harmony of Christian character. 
If any proof of God's hand in the Bible be still 
needed, it may be found in this power which this book 
alone in all literature possesses, of installing itself 
among the springs of character, and working thence in 
men of every degree that inward harmony which is 
the purpose of God. 

These agencies finally lead up to the third and most 
vital of all, — intercourse with God. As we take up this 
topic it is necessary again to insist that these formal 
divisions belong to the order of thought, and not to the 
facts as they occur. Intercourse with God in varying 
degree prevades the entire Christian experience. Work 
faithfully done, the associations of the Church, the 



SA NC TIFICA TION. 2 49 

study of the Bible, all bring with them some con- 
sciousness of divine presence ; and, indeed, for some 
temperaments the latter may often seem the initial 
experience, bringing the others as its fruit. With this 
reservation, and because clear thinking requires an 
orderly sequence of topics, we now come to consider 
intercourse with God as if it were a separate agency of 
salvation. This intercourse may be occasional and 
designed, when it is prayer ; or it may be habitual, 
when it is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. 

Prayer takes innumerable forms, but its essence is 
one. It does not necessitate a form of words, nor a 
consecrated place, nor an intercessor. Nor does its 
essence lie in the purport of utterance or thought. 
The essential fact of prayer is the effort of the soul to 
communicate with a higher spiritual power. In this 
vague sense men have always prayed. The attempt 
seems as instinctive as the social instinct or parental 
care. It is, in fact, the way of access which God has 
ordained for himself to reach the human soul. It 
exists among the other facts of daily life, and its ex- 
pression, of course, has relation to them. But it is 
additional to that discipline of life by which God 
slowly educates the race. And this brings to view a 
momentous fact which our previous studies may seem 
to have ignored. 

While the world is visibly constructed for humanity 



250 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

as a great whole, and while the usual processes of 
social and physical experience seem to act on each 
man only as he is part of the mass, yet each is in fact 
a unit within himself, and what is best in man is re- 
pressed and injured when he is treated as only a con- 
stituent of the race. The family, the school, methods 
of hygiene, political government, and many other ex- 
periences, bring this home to us. The divine govern- 
ment, of course, cannot ignore such a fact, and amid 
all that is general and social there remains to each 
man an open way of access to his Father, towards 
which each is impelled by this native instinct of the 
soul for prayer. A large part of the teaching of Christ 
is directed to this very thing. He labored by precept, 
by parable, by example, to draw out and develop in 
man the assurance of an ever accessible Guide and 
Helper. And all his work through the ages has striven 
to ally each soul individually with God, while it unites 
all in a universal brotherhood. 

Now, for the Christian, prayer is the exercise of this 
birthright. He comes to God with whatever ceremo- 
nial, language, thought, the occasion may require. 
Thanks, supplication, confession, adoration, simple 
content, each or all form the burden of his prayer, 
which, however, no more depends on any one of them 
than does the intercourse of human friends need a 
special character of thought. The question, therefore, 



SANC TIFICA TION. 251 

whether God answers prayer is absurd. The asking is 
not the prayer ; and if we think of this as establishing 
a claim on God, or as turning him from his chosen way, 
we wholly miss the nature and purpose of prayer. 
When the soul striving towards God is conscious of 
the divine presence and has the sense of personal 
communion, its prayer is accomplished, — not answered, 

— and it has attained the supreme possibility of man, 

— association with God. Now, it must certainly result, 
and the world's experience proves the fact, that a 
human soul lifted even for a moment to this height, 
will be strengthened and ennobled. The mind grows 
clear, the imagination kindles, conscience quickens, 
the will turns to God. He who in weakness or in 
wavering has resorted to sincere prayer, finds new 
strength and opened vision. 

Of course such experience will more and more re- 
peat itself, till what was occasional becomes habitual. 
But here God's method with us interposes a wise con- 
straint. It has seemed to men of many faiths, and 
not least to Christians, that life might well be resolved 
into a perpetual ecstasy of divine communion. How 
disastrous have been the attempts at this, it is not 
necessary to recite. The effort rests on a funda- 
mental error. It conceives God as accessible to man, 
while yet man dwells in the flesh, by some other way 
than the familiar life of man. But this very life is 



252 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

ordained to teach us the things of God ; and they who 
withdraw from it in the hope of finding him are mak- 
ing in another form the familiar attempt to discover a 
better way than God's. Their conscience may ap- 
prove the effort, and this may save it from condemna- 
tion as sin; but the fact remains that it is not God's 
way, and cannot succeed. 

When, however, the intercourse of prayer reacts on 
the conduct of life, when all the temper and energy of 
the soul at its higher estate are bent to the wise fol- 
lowing of God's way in daily duty and all the rela- 
tions of normal living, then that is realized to which 
ascetics and devotees aspire in vain. The perfect 
example of life is found in Jesus Christ, and we may 
search the records of his life in vain for any note of 
flaming enthusiasm or ascetic devotion. He has no 
disparagement for the daily ways of men ; he does not 
desire that God should recast the order of his world ; 
he does not even need a new language of philosophi- 
cal phrase and definition. His whole desire is that 
men should give their hearts to God, and walk the 
familiar paths with the consciousness of divine inter- 
course. This is full salvation ; and the mingling of 
such lives is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. 

This completes such a survey as our subject seems 
to require, of the means, the method, and the results 



SA NC TIFICA TION. 253 

of Christ's salvation. For the souls which come un- 
der its discipline it leaves no point untouched. But 
the more we are satisfied with such blessed help for 
ourselves, the more does the thought urge itself upon 
us of that vast multitude to whom Christ has been un- 
known upon the earth. We bring ourselves with re- 
luctance to remember how very small a part of the 
immeasurable human aggregate, past and present, 
not to guess at the future, has any share which we 
can estimate in our inheritance. And as we recall the 
purpose of God, and confront it with such a vast neces- 
sity, the account which has been here given of the 
work of Christ may seem at the first view painfully 
inadequate. But the first view is superficial, and does 
not touch the heart of the matter. 

The fundamental agency of God for bringing souls 
to himself is the experience of life, and from this none 
are or have been exempt. It is the pre-eminence of 
the Gospel that it illuminates this experience, brings 
forth its meaning, demonstrates its perfect work ; that 
in this way it makes those whom it reaches not merely 
the objects of the divine purpose, as all are, but intel- 
ligent and eager fellow-workers in it. Now, if we ask, 
with this in mind, what the unchristian of every name 
still need in order that the experience of life may bear 
its fruit, the answer is that they need the knowledge 
of God and of his purpose towards them, the demon- 



254 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

stration of human possibilities and opportunities which 
the Gospel gives, and the sense of fellowship with God 
and man in the Holy Spirit. 

All that the experience of life can give in prepara- 
tion for these they already possess ; and what we 
know of the tenacity of memory and the persistence of 
spiritual impressions, leaves no room to doubt that the 
experience of life is a lasting possession, and may 
bring forth its full results whenever and wherever these 
spiritual graces shall touch it. The divine Artist may 
develop when he will upon his darkened plates the 
impress which the light of life has given them. Now 
that the intelligence of our time is discarding the 
crude expedient of dark ages, which solved the prob- 
lem off-hand by sweeping all outsiders into promiscu- 
ous and endless doom, — a nightmare no less absurd 
than horrible, — the open possibilities of the future are 
seen to be sufficient. 

We may conceive, in that other life which is still no 
other, the vast assemblage of souls who have left the 
earth, all-embracing, ever recruited. If the mansions 
of the Saviour's word may represent degrees of attain- 
ment, there must be many, indeed ; but they are all in 
our Father's house, and through them all moves the 
beloved presence of the sinner's Friend. We need 
not strain our imagination to picture the new condi- 
tions of life, or intercourse, or work ; but we may be 



SANC TIFICA TION. 255 

sure that whatever these conditions, they will be filled, 
beyond the measure of this world, with the love and 
the meaning of God. We may be sure, too, that all 
these souls, varying in every degree of attainment from 
the highest apprehension to the dullest wonder, will 
mingle in a conscious brotherhood ; that each will find 
others more proficient, who will delight to quicken his 
understanding of the past and awaken a responding 
love ; that it will be the high prerogative of every 
Christlike soul to seek those he can help, and, himself 
in his degree a little Christ, to urge forward the great 
salvation. 

Nor can it be admitted that all this is conjecture. 
It is a reasonable anticipation of the working of powers 
with which we are certainly acquainted, to ends of 
which we have full assurance. And such a concep- 
tion answers most completely the otherwise unsolved 
problem of the destiny of those who knew not Christ 
in their earthly life. Nor does this mean only the 
heathen and the wicked. We all come far short of 
that height which we may reach, and all need to look 
beyond the familiar experience for help and growth 
not realized here. We see through a glass darkly, we 
bear stunted fruits, we do not even know all our needs. 
But the knowledge of the present and the anticipation 
of the future unite and blend as parts of one divine 
process. 



256 THE PURPOSE OF GOD. 

The one great fact never to be lost from sight, 
whether for practical use or the understanding of 
God's ways, is that he grasps us in a single unbroken 
purpose which takes hold of our entire being, while 
our imperfect thought, toiling after him, needs the 
artificial aids of system and analysis. But the process 
matters not if our thinking reach the end. Then we 
shall behold the boundless affluence of God pouring 
itself through all channels and across all obstacles, 
becoming all things to all men, disregarding in the 
perfect assurance of divine wisdom all the distinctions 
of men, — setting the first last and the last first, equal- 
ing the eleventh hour with the heat and burden of the 
day, casting down the mighty and touching the lips of 
babes with wisdom, caring not whether it be a day or 
a thousand years, — but, above all, and through all, 
and in us all, effecting his eternal purpose. 

For the salvation of men is God's work. Our 
studies deal so much with man's limits of time, of 
strength, of wisdom, that we come to make man the 
standard of measure ; whereas the great task which we 
survey, and in which each of us takes his little part, is 
God's task. The view which this book has presented 
aims to measure all by the greatness of God ; and 
when we use this measure the only conclusion is the 
inevitable, entire success of the divine purpose. To 
this certainty all conceptions of difficulty must yield. 



SA JVC TIFICA TI02V. -'57 

Whatever may seem to endanger this must be looked 
upon as doomed. The causes of ultimate results lie 
not in man but in God, who made man what he is. 
The extent of the process looks not to man's years, 
but to God's eternity. The outcome of all is to be, 
not man judged, but the purpose of God accomplished, 
— " that God may be all in all." 



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